Learning a foreign language can be one of the biggest adventures of your lifetime. At least, that’s been my case. I remember when I was nine years old and I had my first English lesson in my homeland, everything seemed so colourful and easy in that thin school book… Nothing like the experience I had many years later, when I decided to cross the ocean for the same purpose.
Anyway, if I had to pick between the option of learning English under the Spanish sun, with the Mediterranean breeze caressing my hair and the smell of my mom’s dishes all around or do it in a deserted Polish neighborhood in one of the coldest and windiest cities in the USA… call me crazy but I would definitely go through the same experience and I’d catch that plane.
Learning English at school in my country was a comfortable way to get slowly familiarized with the vocabulary, grammatical structures and the sounds of Shakespeare’s language. But I must confess that when I landed in Boston, I couldn’t even understand the air hostess when she was waving her hands.
The first three months were kind of a nightmare, my voice, my personality, my sense of humor were absolutely gone while trying to communicate… I felt stupid and isolated. One day, after 95 days of having the wrong kind of coffee, I managed to ask for a dark one, with a drop of milk, no sugar, and four ice cubes and… miracle! I was understood. I finally had exactly what I wanted, my ears were open to what people said, and the ears of the rest of the people to me as well. I felt like the queen of the world in that Dunkin Donuts “pick up” spot.
Learning English in USA has been one of the most crazy, intense and beautiful experiences I’ve lived. So I cannot do other than encourage everyone to get to that foreign country and learn the language there.
