My Dream Birthday Present: Fluency

Since my pre-teen obsession with the best epic adventure trilogy in the history of the written English language, also known as The Lord of The Rings, I have dreamed of some day being a polyglot.  I have also, however, been sobered by the notion that polyglots are generally people who simply have a gift for languages.  I, unfortunately, am not one of these people (although I do know one of them). 

A famous picture of J.R.R. Tolkien-
look at how classy he is with his pipe
http://nerdfighters.ning.com/group/languagenerds

My desire to speak languages fluently stems from the aforementioned masterpiece of J.R.R. Tolkien, because of the presence of multiple languages in the story.  Tolkien created over 20 languages, each with not only its own grammar and vocabulary, but also its own people and history.  The depth of Tolkien’s languages is probably what makes his mythology (which extends far beyond The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings) so enthralling – it’s like real life.

Even to this day, I cannot claim fluency in more than one language – English.  I do speak French, but ça reste, and my Wolof is at about a basic-intermediate level – Maangi jang.  In the fall I decided to aim for 5 main languages – French, Wolof, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish.  Somewhere around March, however, I became quite pessimistic about the feasibility of this goal. 

A few months ago, picking up and moving around from country to country, staying long enough to master the language (about a year), sounded like a pretty good way to start off life after college.  And it is – in theory.  I love travelling, I love learning languages, I love meeting people and making friends, so it seems like a perfect plan, right? 

Wrong.  I also love knowing and belonging somewhere, continuing to speak those languages that I’m learning, building and maintaining those friendships.  All of a sudden constantly moving from country to country, language to language, culture to culture, people to people sounds a lot more complicated than I thought. 

Thanks, honey
http://www.paradisebabyco.com/baby-travel-checklist/

How will I maintain links to each place, if I’m constantly going to a new one?  And then there’s the whole settling down and making a living thing.  As boring as it may sound, I will want to get married and have a family and drive my kids around in my shiny mini-van.  That’s right, I said it, a soccer mom.  But can’t I be a soccer mom who takes her kids around in airplanes instead of minivans?  Can’t I take them from Senegal to Chile instead of from soccer game to ballet practice?  I guess that is asking a bit much of my future spawn, not to mention my future spouse.

Luckily for me, there is hope!  Yesterday while browsing through Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips, I discovered Benny the Irish polyglot.  At the age of 21, Benny spoke one language – English.  Now, eight years later, he is fluent in eight languages and working on others.  He claims to have discovered language learning “hacks,” making fluency in three months possible. 

Although I highly doubt that I will ever create my own languages like Mr. Tolkien, I will not give up hope on fluency in my five (already existing) languages just yet.  Three months in each country sounds much more do-able than a year – what do you think, kids?

Pastimes

OK so this has nothing to do with busting
the cover off of the baseball,
but it's easily one of the best google
image results for "The Sandlot,"
we all know why.

Remember that fateful scene from The Sandlot, the one that eventually led Smalls, Benny, Ham, Squints, Yeah Yeah, Kenny, Bertram Grover Weeks, Repeat, and Timmy into the "the biggest pickle any of them had ever seen"?  No, not the one where Smalls idiotically steals his step-dads Babe Ruth signed baseball, think...why did he need a baseball in the first place?  Yes, the scene where Benny busts the cover off of the ball.  If you don’t remember this, perhaps you do recall a similar scene in the Disney classic Angels in the Outfield (1994).  If neither of these events are familiar to you, you are either not American or (if you are American) had a sad, empty childhood and I pity you. 

http://info.mymovies.ge/

            The sport of baseball is renowned throughout the U.S. of A. as the great American pastime.  Although not quite as glamorized as American Football, baseball claims its place as a staple of American culture.  The international popularity of baseball, however, is limited to parts of South America, of the Caribbean and of Eastern Asia.  The rest of the world claims another sport as what childhood memories are built around, as the source of widespread excitement and game-watching parties.  Yes, of course I am talking about soccer.  Although steadily gaining in popularity since the celebrity of Pelé, the phenomenon of the world’s sport has somehow managed to skip over America, sitting perpetually behind baseball, American football, basketball, and hockey. 

            The rest of the world, however, cherishes original football.  Rather than deeply analyzing this disparity between one culture and most of the other ones, I will simply show some pictures describing it.  Bear in mind, photos of kids playing in the street or on sand pitches in torn up clothes and flat balls may seem stereotypical of photography taken by westerner's in non-western countries, but a picture of kids playing soccer in Senegal, for example, is just as much a stereotype of a trip to a "developing" country as a picture of kids playing baseball in their neighborhood sandlot is a stereotype of American moms showing off their trophy kids.  After all, however true or false or politically correct they may be, stereotypes do exist for a reason.

Bassoul, Fatick, Senegal

Yoff, Dakar, Senegal

Not so stereotypical, but needless to say, USA won this match
Ngor Beach, Dakar, Senegal
Photo Credit: Alex Mendrek-Laske

Wrapping Up

The term "wrapping up" can have many different meanings, for example, hiding Christmas presents within colorful paper (or, as dictated by my college budget last year, within newspaper), bundling up in multiple layers of insulating clothes to protect you from the blistering cold of the North American winter, or, less literally, bringing something to an end.  Currently, I am participating in only one of these "wrapping up activities."  I'll give you a hint, it doesn't have to do with presents or the cold.  Yes, I am talking about the semester coming to an end.  Now, for me, you could say, and I even imagined up until today, that this point is really more of a halfway marker, because I will be in Senegal for 5 more months.  However, as was suddenly brought to my attention a few hours ago, this is the end for all of the semester MSIDers, and therefore the end of my being a part of MSID Fall 2010. 

I actually happen to love wrapping presents

The good-byes today were awkward and unexpected.  We actually did have some presents, but no wrapping or newspaper.  We also have some students who will soon be experiencing the biting cold of jack frost, but, since it is currently 77°F with a slight ocean breeze, we have no layers or insulating materials.  Endings we do have, and as we come from many different universities, it really may be the last time some of us will see each other at least for a very long time, maybe ever.

This will not be a part of my wardrobe this year

Thrown together in a foreign country, the twenty of us make quite the hodge-podge.  Although many lasting friendships, and no deep-seeded rivalries have resulted from this semester, there has certainly been lots of tension at times (Real World: Dakar, anyone?)  We have also had lots of fun, and so it was a sobering day for the group.  I, in particular, was reminded of the All-American, white Christmas holiday season (because let's be serious, in America, Christmas dominates the month of December) that the others are going back to.  I was made aware of just how different their junior years will be from my own.  While this "winter break" is, in ways, a new beginning, it is also the wrapping up of my Fall semester- minus the usual wrapping up of presents and my body from the frigidness of December.