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As I pause for a rare moment to reflect on the strange times we all find ourselves in, a rollercoaster keeps coming to mind. As COVID-19 hit each of our communities, we’ve been up and down, tossed and flipped all…
One thing that is on every mom’s wish list these days is a commodity that’s hard to come by: peace and quiet. While it’s a relief to have the family home safe and healthy, many parents are wearing lots of…
I’m not going to lie, I spend way too much time on Instagram. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is go for my phone. And while I’m trying to help end my Instagram addiction,…
Something I found pretty crazy when I traveled around the world was that no matter if I was in Vietnam or Greece or Peru, I would always hear English music on the radio. I would still hear a lot of…
I’ve been using Rosetta Stone for language learning since it was just this huge box filled with CDs. Over the years I’ve watched the company evolve to also include an app, but I didn’t think it could get much better…
For the past few weeks, it feels like the COVID-19 crisis has completely consumed our lives. And in a way, it has. Seemingly overnight, our daily routines, our work lives, our interactions with one another, have all been entirely uprooted…
I never thought I would enjoy talking at a light fixture for 30 minutes until my 96-year-old yiayia finally figured out how to FaceTime. Even though she hasn’t completely figured out how to correctly position the camera, I’ve still been…
When I was in elementary school I went to a Spanish immersion school. And when I was in first grade, an obsession rippled through our school. The obsession was a song (with some amazingly choreographed dance moves) called “Asereje” by…
Earlier this afternoon I was standing oog in oog met (face to face with) Van Gogh in Amsterdam. There he was with his green eyes and red beard wearing a blue smock telling me goedemiddag (good afternoon). And all of…
I tutor a French middle schooler, and he speaks almost perfect English. We’ll talk for 30 minutes and he’ll make one, two or sometimes zero mistakes. I also tutor a few French friends who are in their 20s. Some of…
As I write this I’m sitting on the couch looking out my window in Rouen, France, a mid-size town an hour and half north of Paris. I’ve been here for the last two years as a high school English teaching…
Even in times of self-imposed isolation, we can still become proficient in a language. I fooled myself into believing that my environment had a direct impact on whether or not I could speak a language. The key to learning a language is effort. Here are some ways to think outside the box when it comes to not just learning a language but learning a different culture as well.
