Step wise guide to going to a new country:
Step 1 was Apply for the Visa
Step 2 is a rather broad one: Learn.
To be able to truly enjoy yourself and your experiences, become a part of the experience itself. And what better to know a country and its culture than to actually learn one of the languages spoken in the country. Remember this will not just help you communicate with the locals and exchange pleasantries, ask for directions, except their invitations for food and drinks but this will also help you actually understand their culture, their movies, their music, their views political and personal. And later in life if you ever happen to make a few friends from that country outside that country, say you meet some French kids in New York, it will be a wonderful surprise for them to hear their language from a stranger's mouth and even though they will tease you ample about your prononciation in the public but in the heart you will be able to share a strong bond of language.
I did try to do this unsuccessfully in China but apart from learning the names of my favorite foods i am afraid i couldn't learn much. But hey i tried, and most of my friends usually get happy when they see me enjoying a hot chinese meal at their table with chopsticks. There is an interesting story behinds chopsticks too but thats for some other time if havent already mentioned it in my previous post. (And i am proud to say, i am not too bad at Mahjong either).
So, back to learning language. Well so since i have always wanted to learn a third language, i thought, hey, what better than French, will even look good on my resume.
So i ordered a learn french in 10 days fast track course and guess what i can speak a little french, unfortunately i cant write, as it was a listening course focusing more on prononciation than on the actual grammar or spellings and thats how you learn the best, babies learn that way (which you will know if you read my Master's thesis ;)) There's a little cheap advertisement.
Well, the road has been paved but it is still to be seen how far i will go on it. I can ask for directions, follow directions (thats a joke for people who know me and how gloriously dumb i am at 'following directions')... I have been watching a lot of French movies, BBC's french class videos, i have even started listening to french music of late. Stella Artois is my favorite beer of all times so i am already accepted in Belgium i hope.
I do try to look up for pronunciation of names of places that i will be visiting and food i would like to eat. We dont have much time left, 20 more days to go so my friend and i have divided the learning part, he is learning the currency conversion and driving on the right side of the road. I will be lucky enough to just learn to drive by then, i am working very hard on it, just today i started driving on the main roads of Canfield, but boy, it is an unnerving experience. But as they say, 'Anything for the countries we love...' right?
So thats step 2.
Step 3 is booking tickets and i have a long story about that too... as i did not have a pleasant experience with a website called M@#$my@#$#... so stay tuned for a ranting session.
