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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4798 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 121 of 270 20 April 2012 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Amazing progress, Christina. And may I have your job? :) Traveling all over is like my
childhood dream job. That and working in a library, haha :) Fascinating trips you've been making. I'm seriously almost snapping from lack of speech in my target languages, so I'll have to start looking for native speakers soon! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 122 of 270 26 April 2012 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Teango - thanks for your encouragements. I love being on your team too, and I agree that this will be our break through year:
@Woodsei - thanks for your encouragenements too. And no, I can't give you my job: But I can give you lots of encouragements to find a similar one! Otherwise I have tried several times to make an update, but between the extremely intense emotional week I had in Spain, and the horrible week I am having this week, I have really been struggling to. I like to use my sense of humour in my writing, and generally I am able to show a smiling face regardless of the circumstances - but this week I have cried so much I have hardly any tears left. The week in Spain was lovely, but filled with intense contrasts. Old jealousy, insanity, fright and 30 years' old hidden secrets, but also loyalty, a wave of love from so many people, and being with people I love and who are like family to me. I'll see if I can manage to give more details later. The good things was that I got to speak a ton of Spanish, and I got to meet our team mate mrwarper, which was really cool. This week is a nightmare, because they have opened the trial against the terrorist who murdered dozens of young people this summer. At the time of the terror attack I was not able to deal with it, because I was almost broken in two by the grief of my father's death, which happened the day after, and my mother's death, which had happened exactly 6 months before. I therefore shunned the rose parade and the flower ocean in front of the cathedral, which is across the street from my job. But this week with the trial, you cannot see a newspaper or listen to the news without having every excruciating detail from the murders, and see the smiling face of the murderer everywhere, and all the grief of my parents' death is brough up again. 100 meters from where the bombing took place, and 300 meters from where I now sit there are now 40 000 people singing "Children of the rainbow" - which is a song about appreciating the diversity of mankind, wiht all coulours and creeds. They are singing in protest of the murders, and in protest against the man who committed them. I can hear them, but I do not have the strenght to join them. You cannot sing when you are crying. In several cities in Norway they are singing the same song, and even in Iceland, they are doing the same thing. I am really touched by that. Ok. I'll make a slightly less depresive update later, I just needed to get this off my chest. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4977 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 123 of 270 26 April 2012 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Beautiful post, Cristina. I have tears in my eyes now, as well.
As saddening as the incident was, and as shocking as it is to hear of sick people like the shooter, it is equally warming to remember that there are many good people, such as yourself, in this world. Thanks for this post, and, as odd as this sounds, thanks for existing. Same message goes to the entire team. Где любовь и совет, там и горя нет. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5396 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 124 of 270 26 April 2012 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Big hugs from across the pond, Cristina. You (and your country) have been in my thoughts a lot lately. As sick as this guy is, it is really inspiring to see everyone else rallying together. His heinous actions have done exactly the opposite of what he had hoped.
You are a true inspiration, to me, and to many others here. You are an amazing person, and you will get through this. Just take one step at a time. There are times in life when that is the only way you can survive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 125 of 270 26 April 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Je suis absolument crevé (et mon humeur est le pire) maintenant mais moi aussi je veux te donner de confiance. La catastrophe en Norvège était une grande déception pour l'humanité mais il me semble que tu vas avoir la force d'esprit et la charactère de battre ces souvenirs.
We all feel like crap every once in a while. My brain is in some crazy mode where it's stuck in thinking in French while it's absolutely completely and utterly nonfunctional in every way at the same time. So hence the stupid rant in French :) We'll get there somehow. Or you will. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 126 of 270 27 April 2012 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
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@Sol I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time :(
On the other hand I'm glad to see so many people around here offering some warmth and comfort and kind words, especially those who come from cultures usually regarded as 'so cold in the outside' here. You guys really make this a better place. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying such things to people I have never met in person, though (you all know I haven't done so in your logs), because in the first place I wouldn't really know how to take them from nearly complete strangers in the distance. However it's good not everyone keeps it to themselves like me and try to help someone I feel more connected to now, even if only with words -- sorry I'm not able to offer you all anything more than moral support from far away. @Cristina again - ánimo, ¿vale?: piensa que no hay mal que cien años dure :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 127 of 270 28 April 2012 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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@tecktight, @kerrie@tarvos and mrwarper – Thank you all for your compassion. You have no idea how much it means to me. I feel that I have no right to feel sorry for myself for having lost my parents, when there are people out there who have lost their children – something which is 10 000 time worse, but like my mother in law says: “Feelings are not right or wrong, they are just there”.
…….. APRIL 10TH TO 27TH WARNING: This entry will be a small novel and will contain all the melodrama of a Latin American telenovela, and the linguistic content will be low, so you may want to skip the major part of it, and just go straight to the statistics. SPAIN I said I was going to give you more details of the trip. As it were, it was both absolutely wonderful, but also absolutely heart wrenching, since so many thing came up to the surface. This is the village I grew up. This is the village where I fell in love for the first time, had my first real boy friend, smoked my first cigarette, put on make-up for the first time, and where I had some very close and good friends. This is the village I chose not to go back to for decades, in order to protect someone I cared about, and this is the only place I know of where there is someone who actually hates me, and she does not even have reason to. Life is strange. When my daughter and I were coming close to the village, we stopped a couple of kilometres away, and just took in the scent. It has the most wonderful scent of orange blossoms that you can imagine - it is like being surrounded by the most exquisite perfume. And when we got to the house, it was like it exploded. Grandmother, parents, children, neighbors, people I have known for almost 40 years came running out to greet and hug us. Everyone should be received like that when coming to town. My daughter was accepted into the school the next day, and the poor thing was just dropped there with no knowledge of Spanish, while I waved goodbye. Had this been in Norway, I would have been worried about her being alone and isolated, but when our paths crossed half an hour later, she was surrounded by a big crowd of youngsters, who all wanted to talk to her and touch her hair, so I was almost more worried about her getting a panic attack. Fortunately she is a robust little thing, so she was fine. She will follow regular Spanish classes, and I am very excited to see what will happen. When I was there, roaming free, it took me one month to communicate, 3 months to speak Spanish, so it will be interesting to see how she does. In any event I think she will have the time of her life. When she came home she told me about a couple of kids who had helped her, and I realized that they were the nephew and niece of one of my best friends. At this point I have to go back 30 years in time. I had at the time a few very close friends, and one of them was Francisco. He was like my big brother, my friend, my protector, my knight and my guide. I was 18, he was 21. And he was also in love with me. I cared deeply about him too, but I also knew that we would never be happy together. He worked in construction, had quit school at the age of 12, had never left the village, and wanted a stay at home mom for a wife. I had already qualified as a French teacher, was going to do the same in English and Spanish, and wanted to travel the world. In fact, already at the age of 18 I had travelled more around than 99% of the villagers there ever will. He was also very ready to settle down and get married, and at 18 that was as far from my wishes as it could possibly be. Therefore, when the moment came that I realized that he was going to “declararse” (I know that it sounds like something out of the 18th century, but at that time it was not uncommon for a boy to formally declare his feelings for a girl – after which he would be allowed to “entrar en su casa” come to her house – and be accepted as her suitor) I ducked. I knew that if I turned him down, it would destroy our friendship, so I needed to stop him before the words were said. He realized what I was doing and stopped. A while later he came to me and said he was considering to write to a second cousin of his who had shown interest in him, and since he was ready to settle down, he wanted my advise as a friend as to whether I thought he should do it. I realized that this was his way of asking if there was any chance of there being anything more between us, but I was not ready to be more than his friend, and I wanted him to be happy, so I said it was a great idea. A few months later they were going steady. At this time I went back to Norway, happy for him that he had found a nice girl, and happy that we were still good friends, as we still wrote to each other. Then I got a letter from his girlfriend. Dolores, saying that she wanted us to become great friends, since she knew I also cared about Francisco, and she wanted to be part of every aspect of his life. Now had this been today, I would have smelled a rat, because I had heard she was very jealous. But since I was 18 and innocent, and naive, I was touched by her sweet letter, and answered that I would love for us to become friends, and I did indeed care deeply about him too, so it would be wonderful to be friends with her. The next letter came from him. He wrote that he was terribly sorry, but he could not write to me anymore. Dolores had made a mega scene, using my letter, claiming that she had known all along that I loved him, and that she would never allow him to write to me again, and if I wrote to him or crossed the bridge which led to the village, she would break off the engagement. I was in chock of how she could possibly interpret my words like that, and very sad at not being able to go back to the village I loved, but Francisco was my best friend, and I could not bear to do anything which would cause him pain, so I stayed away, for 10 years. I was then invited to the wedding of my little sister, and I thought that Dolores could not possibly be jealous anymore of someone who had stayed out of Francisco’s life completely for 10 years. I went to the wedding, and since I figured that it would be a normal thing to see my old friend again, I went to his home to pay a visit. I could not think of any other way which would be more open, honest and respectful. She was the only one at home, but she did not even bother to open the door for me, she just talked to me from the second floor, and made it redundantly clear that she would tell him, but not let him see me. I decided that since it might take another 10 years before I came back, I wanted to say hello at least, so the next day I went to his mother, who has always treated me with love and respect, and asked her if she knew where I could find him. She said he was working just around the corner, so I stopped by. I said “Hi, I stopped by your house yesterday”. He answered: Yes, you may not want to do that too often, because my wife in insanely jealous. She almost tore the house down”. I just looked at him and said “It has been 10 years!” and then I just turned around and left. I knew what hell she must have put him through to make him say that, and since all his coworkers were watching, I realized that I was getting him into more trouble by the minute. Then I let another 16 years pass. My only contact was the Christmas letters and picture I sent to my family, and the call on the birthday of my Spanish mother. The only time I was a couple of days late calling her for her birthday, was when I was busy giving birth to my first daughter, and they would not let me call abroad from the clinic. Then 4 years ago my family wanted to see the village I grew up in, and my Spanish family had been begging me to come and see them for years, and again I thought: By now Dolores must have forgotten, and besides, I am bringing my husband and my two daughters – it must be fine this time. And it was lovely to come back – everyone kissed us and said how happy they were to see me – and a lot of people just saw my two daughters with my Spanish little sister, and said: What! Is Cristina in town? They both look so much like me. Since it was Easter and lots of people out in the streets, I met his whole family who hugged and greeted me. I had sworn that I would not speak to him until he spoke to me, in order not to get him into trouble, but when I was standing between his mother and sister, and with the rest of his family around me, he came over and we exchanged a few words – but out of the corner of my eye I could feel daggers flying through the air from his wife – who did not come and greet me. There were parades all through the holidays, and his family stayed by my side all through them, but his sister told me that Dolores was going crazy, screaming blue murder to all of them, and threatening his mother never to speak to her again, if she kept talking to me. She was royally ignored by all of them, which probably did not make anything any better. Then another 4 years have passed. And I knew of course that just having my daughter in the village would be enough to make her go wild. But at this point I decided that I could not care less. I have never done anything to hurt her. I have stayed away from people I loved for decades, to respect her feelings and to protect my friend from her fury, but enough is enough. I did however find out this time, that I was not the only object of her hate, even though I was top of the list. And this time I told his sister everything. The letters, the threats – I saw no reason to protect her anymore. Like last time I made no attempt to contact him, but he found me while I was out having lunch with some friends, and came over to greet me. “I am leaving my daughter here for three months, I said. Here she is”. He looked at her and smiled, and said: ” She is lovely- Like her mother”, but he did not dare to sit down with us – his sister had already told me that Dolores was making the most terrible scenes again. Later in the evening I was complaining to my sister and brother in law about her causing all this trouble when there was no ground for it. Francisco and I had never even dated – we were just friends. My brother in law answered: “Well perhaps she sees something in him when he speaks about you that makes her go off like this. Francisco is always calm, no matter what happens – but when he came over to greet you he put his hand on my shoulder, and he was shaking like a leaf.” The thing that I found really touching though, was that again, his sister and mother, and brother and their spouses really went out of their way to welcome me, invited me over and spent as much time with me as they possibly could. Knowing well what that will cost them in trouble from Dolores, I cannot be grateful enough. And then there was my friend Diego Luis who I was almost just as close with, but who fortunately has a normal wife, with whom I have the kind of friendship I would have liked to have with Dolores. Unfortunately, things had not gone well with him either, he had had a mental break down, and had been committed to an asylum, and he and his wife had had a divorce. We made an appointment, because even though my friends warned me that I should not be alone with him, I thought that nothing is going to keep me away from an old friend who might need me. So we met up at his place, and I quickly realized, that he was not quite as over his paranoia as people thought. He claimed half the town were involved with the Italian mafia, that the company his daughter worked for in Jaen was also involved with the mafia, that his wife had had almost 100 lovers, that she was a drug addict (and offered as proof the fact that she cleaned the flat too often for his taste – a sign of cocaine addiction according to him!) and boasted of the fact that he had cheated on her. Repeatedly. This was so far from the young carefree spirit I knew 30 years ago, that I got really depressed. But nothing he told me chocked me as much as the fact, that when I asked him to make me a cup of tea, he couldn’t. Two years after his wife had left him he had not learned how to put a kettle on. In fact, he did not even have a single kettle in the house. I had learned that he had been accused of violence against his wife and children, and he started talking about that. It was getting darker and darker as he spoke, and he had not put the light on, and he waived his hands in front of me, as he intensely denied having beaten up his wife. He had beaten up his children, but he had never hit his wife. He said :”The only thing I have done is this”, put his hands around my throat in a choking movement and screamed “Te voy a matar” (I am going to kill you), as a demonstration of how he had not abused his wife… Now, I do not scare easily, and he did not hurt me, nor had any intention of hurting me, but I do admit to a certain uneasiness at that point. Sitting alone in the dark with someone who has been committed for insanity, who obviously still has a major case of paranoia and who just admitted to hurting his own children and probably having scared the living daylights out of his own wife, was troubling. I asked him if he did not understand how something like that must have scared his wife, but he just waved that thought away, and said that she was not scared, she had just screamed. (Because obviously screaming is a sure sign of not being scared…) We were supposed to go out to dinner, but I dropped it. I simply couldn’t. Fortunately this was most of the drama. The rest of the week was filled with people kissing and hugging me, saying how pleased they were to see me, and how I must let them know if there was anything at all they could do for my daughter, who should consider their home her home. And my daughter, partly through school, and partly because the children of all my old friends came by, already had her own group of friends before I left. I was invited out so much, that I had to tell my old best friend, that I could only come to her house and have tea at 22.30 the last night before leaving, it was the only slot left. I had a great time, and I think I must have spoken Spanish something like 15 hours a day. The only other sad part, was that some of my friends are struggling hard with the gigantic unemployment in Spain. I wish there was anything I could have done for them, but since they have no foreign language skills, I cannot suggest that they come here. It was tough to say goodbye to my daughter, but I knew that she was in the best of hands. And I stopped over to say hi to our team mate mrwarper, which was a lot of fun. Due to all the drama I had been through, I probably seemed a bit unfocused, but since he did not know me, I was hoping that he wouldn’t notice. We had a great conversation about language and grammar versus learning by doing, which probably sounded incredibly nerdy to anyone passing by, but which at least I enjoyed immensely. Otherwise the week has been incredibly hectic. As you may know, in addition to my day job I run a tiny company, for sale of homemade rose jelly and garden photographs, and I also give lectures on roses and tulips. On Monday I prepared a lecture, on Tuesday I gave it, on Wednesday I made two different sort of rose jelly, and on Thursday I had a ton of letters from my Peruvian friend’s lawyers which I needed to translate and answer. I swear, there are times I would like to clone myself. So my language results this week heavily reflect my non-stop talking and listening in Spain, plus a ton of Spanish movies after I got back, and the fact that I have taken some Russian classes. Plus, since I have no resistance to any sort of challenge at all, I took the Wanderlust week voucher, and have thrown myself into Mandarin for the three days before the challenges start. I have written this in the wanderlust thread, but I repeat it here so I have it all in my log: Mandarin for the 3 day Wanderlust voucher: Day 1 - Chinese Pimsleur Lesson 1 - 3 times - can still not say anything else but "ni hao" which I knew already (1. 5 hours). I cannot see how I am ever going to be able to speak any Mandarin at all. - Univerb: Read the grammar (which is of all of 8 pages and so bad it is not even funny) (25 min) - "The first 100 Chinese characters": Tuttle: Repeated the first four characters which are so easy it actually is fun - and this time I read the different meanings as well. I really like that the words for months consist of the characters for moon and the number of the month (4 + moon= April - 5 + moon = May) and the days consists of two signs which mean day plus the corresponding number for the day. Cool! (20 minutes) - Lee Cooper: Chinese language for beginners - the first 10 pages. Not as much as it sounds, as there are big drawings and just a few characters, but it made learning them fun. Does anyone know if there are more books like that? (30 minutes). - 30 minutes Mandarin Talkmore -Argh. Why does nothing stick? So a fairly active day - hope I can match it the next couple of days! The results this week: FOCUS LANGUAGES Russian: 11.35 German: 30 minutes NON FOCUS LANGUAGES English: Have not even bothered to note it down… Spanish: 61.35 Mandarin: 3.15 Ukrainian: 30 minutes AND THE TOTAL OF THIS YEAR SO FAR: FOCUS LANGUAGES Russian: 277 h 05 min German: 50 h 15 minutes Greek: 2h 10 min NON FOCUS LANGUAGES English: 150 h Spanish: 85 h 10 min Swedish/Danish 10 hours Italian: 8h 30 minutes Mandarin: 4 hours Ukrainian: 1 hour Arabic: 1 hour and 5 minutes French: 40 minutes Icelandic:20 minutes Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 28 April 2012 at 1:05am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 128 of 270 28 April 2012 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
That's a lot of drama for one blog post...
I agree with this. Edited by tarvos on 28 April 2012 at 1:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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