I don’t use this blog anymore and rarely did. Therefor I created a new one!
Day 1: In the beggining… January 31, 2010
Outside my porch. I love sky pictures and would like to add one each day.
For about 4 years now I have been a photography enthusiast but for the last year and a half I have been lacking tremendously. I began complaining perhaps weekly about how I don’t take pictures anymore and I say enough complaining and START! I came across something called Project365, which is pretty self explanitory (sort of). You take one picture each day for 365 days straight. I browsed through some projects and they were inspiring. That made me realize that if I want to begin getting my photography habits back, this indeed will be a great step to begin that. With that said here is my first picture
This is my Kitty. His name is Koshki which is plural for cat in Russian. He was right next to me so I decided to give him the honor to be #1 :p
Portuguese Update #1
It’s been a week since I last updated my language studies. Since then I have studied Portuguese almost daily.
I completed Pimsleurs Portuguese I tracks 17 to 26. With each one being 30 min long. That means I studied Portuguese for 5 hours.
Here is the new update:
German: 265 Hours 25 min
Russian: 208 Hours 25 min
French: 160 Hours 40 min
Italian: 33 Hours 00 min
Portuguese: 13 8 Hours
Dutch: 6 Hours
Ukrainian: 5 Hours
Mandarin: 3 Hours
Croatian: 1 Hour
Latin: 1 Hour
There was a few days that I did not study. I will try my best to continue my studies.
For this up coming semester I don’t plan to take any courses because I want to focus on my requirements. I am a bit disappointed because I’ve met many nice people in language courses and it was indeed a pleasure to work with them. You see how much you progress throughout the semester and help each other along the way. I will miss that. I am sad but I wont let that affect my studies. I need to come up with a plan of what I want to focus on studying because I am going to have a time consuming schedule. I will update next with my plan.
Myself
I just watched Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten documentary about the Clash.
All I can say is, EPIC! Thank you so much Joe. You have changed my life and have helped me find myself again. Everything that you did as a musician and as a human being are things that are rare to find in people now days. You have given me a good perspective on the world.
Thank you Joe and R.I.P
❤
History is His Story? A Language History January 22, 2010
Where to begin? Oh yeah this is about my entire history (up to this point) experimenting, flirting, etc. with languages. Fortunately for me, I was raised in an enviroment from which both English and Spanish was spoken daily. I can tell you now though that as a kid I never saw this as something special or to feel proud of, in fact the contrary. Growing up I was friends with kids who only knew English and to know something other than that and being tease for whatever reason (about knowing Spanish) made me feel embarrassed to even say I spoke something other than English. At times I would pretend I didn’t understand it. How silly right? If only I had that mentality I have now as a kid, I’d be speaking +20 languages fluently (okay maybe not but you get my point). My mother and father would tell me that I should feel good about myself that I know two languages because in the future there would be many opportunities for me. As a kid though, how much of an importance is that?
Obviously this is a language blog and I have shared with you my secret of my childhood, so what happened? Interestingly enough I grew up! I started to develop a different view on the world. I began to make friends from all over the world. I found all these cultures and different lifestyles interesting. I began to notice the benefits of knowing Spanish, especially in a city where Spanish could be heard just about anywhere you may find a human being. At this stage of my life I was already starting to understand everything my parents had told me growing up, all the advice (Yes I was a bit of a rebellious individual, different story now :p). This knowing of more than one language was no different. I did indeed see the opportunities.
I was always interested in history, even as a kid but at the age of 17 I began to become more aware of the world. That’s a whole different story for later. Through out high school I still only knew English and Spanish so I hadn’t yet developed an interest for languages. Actually for my foreign language requirement to graduate high school I took, well….Spanish. I know right? Way to challenge myself!
It was not until my 2nd semester of college that I even though about the idea of flirting with another language. On a sunny July afternoon of 2007. I was sitting down at a table near the registration office looking through the school catalog and seeing what looked interesting. At this point of my life I still wasn’t %100 sure what I wanted to do with my life. I remember thinking to myself while browsing though Ricardo you enjoy cultures and you have an interest in the world, why not give a language a try?. I never studied a language I wasn’t familiar with so this indeed was a challenge, a challenge I was indeed ready to take on. The story began like that and through out my French adventures I started to realize how easy it was for me to learn this new language. Was it that I was learning something that was related to something I already knew? Who know. I just know that I found patterns to learning. That experience alone triggered an obsession or how about a hobby? For learning languages. I started to study Russian 2 months into my French studies and I fell in love with it. Russian history was always a bigger interest for me and I had a slight interest of the Cold War but learning it somehow sparked another thing for me. I am now a huge Cold War history buff. Interesting how things work right? Anyways back to languages. After Russian came a little bit of Ukrainian for me, followed by; German, Italian, Mandarin, Latin, and Portuguese (the most notable ones). In no way am I fluent in all of those but I have kept records of the amount of time I spent studying each language.
German: 265 Hours 25 min
Russian: 208 Hours 25 min
French: 160 Hours 40 min
Italian: 33 Hours 00 min
Portuguese: 8 Hours
Dutch: 6 Hours
Ukrainian: 5 Hours
Mandarin: 3 Hours
Croatian: 1 Hour
Latin: 1 Hour
Some of these languages, mainly the lower half I did out of interest and wanting to try something new or see how similar they are to others.
This is what this blog will be all about and I hope and will try my best to keep the records updated.
A New New Beginning
I’ve been lurking through a few blog sites for some time now and I was a bit fascinated by them and decided to create my own. My goal and mainly what I want to use this for is to record my progress of the languages I am learning and wish to learn. Hopefully someone out there will learn something or find this inspiring. I wish that to be the case for inspiring is what I love to do!
Over Kiev 