By the time you finished reading that post header, you probably fell asleep. And I don’t mean for a nap. I mean for the night. My Foreign Language Project needs a punchier name than “My Foreign Language Project.”
Well, while I mull that over in a new window, I guess I should finish this post. Yep, I’ve been working on my foreign language project for two years now and so far I’ve put aside about $1,200. I’m averaging about $1.70 a day, which is still short of my goal. If I want to reach my goal by the time I’m the age my mom was when she died, I’ll need to average $2 per day. And if I can get up to an average of $2.50, I’d have time to actually get the degree by the time I’m that age. Today I put aside $2.66 so maybe I’ll hit $2.50. We’ll see.
So right now I’m focusing largely on listening to Spanish-language music and paying myself $0.015 per minute. I’ve been listening to a *lot* of Spanish-language music. I currently have Robarte un Beso (YouTube link) going in yet another window (I love multitasking computers). It’s a great song and the video is mostly very sweet. When the other girls push Juliana towards Mateo (the middle-school storyline) it bothers me. Juliana should have . . . oh, dear God, what’s the term? I always have trouble with this one. Sexual autonomy! That’s it! Juliana should be able to choose whether to be flattered or creeped out or find it kind of threatmantic or whatever on her own without others pressuring her into it.
I’ve been focusing on my Spanish to the exclusion of other languages for a while now, though, so I’ve swapped out Spanish for English-speakers on Duolingo for Spanish for Chinese-speakers (because, of course, there’s no Chinese for Spanish-speakers — that would be too easy). I will hit the proverbial wall at some point, because my Spanish is, like, immeasurably better than my Chinese.
I also applied for another Rosetta Stone language through my employer. I wanted to firm up my Italian or German, but neither were available. So I opted for another new-ish language — Russian. I don’t know how much use it’ll be, but I’ve always wanted to learn Russian (ever since I discovered that it was one of my great-grandmother’s languages). I said that I didn’t want to start until December, though, and I haven’t heard anything after I filled out the “why do you want to learn this language” form. I’ve got a little while until December. And if it doesn’t work out, well, it’s not the end of the world.
Speaking of Rosetta Stone, I planned to, in 2018, buy about six months’ worth to study either German or Italian, then let it lapse, then resubscribe for about six months to do the other. I ended up doing neither. Maybe in 2019?
And speaking of things I didn’t accomplish in 2018, I intended to return to foreign language tutoring but I never did so. I was the foreign language tutor for my junior college back in the late 1980s. I tutored both Spanish and German. I’m just glad none of the French students needed tutoring. So that’s another goal for 2019, I guess.
Now I’m off to research god and goddesses of knowledge in hopes of finding a good name for this project. Or maybe not. It’s after midnight, so I guess I’m going to bed now.