Cherries, Jesus, and Paris!

Yay! It’s Cherry Season! My two favorite fruit seasons are Cherries/Blueberries in the summer and Pears in the winter. During the interminable dry spells between them, I’m forced to subsist on Fuji apples, grapes, and pluots (plum-apricot hybrids full of sweet juiciness). Oh, the humanity!

Car update: If you want a used car for less than 10 large out here, from a private owner, you better have an envelope of cash the day it goes up on Craigslist. No taking it to the mechanic. No paying by cashier’s check. I spent a week chasing cars to learn this. I would get a call back that day, but they’d be sold within 2 days. So I’m moving on to dealer used cars, in the next price range up. Then the next, then the next...

Divorce update: We both signed the settlement agreement. Now our file waits for a court clerk to check it and stamp it. I will be single on August 13. I wish there was a way I could stop the divorce. Even if I refuse to sign anything, it would continue on anyway. All it takes is one person’s determination. 

This isn’t how I wanted it to be. We both ruled out divorce as an option when we got married. We both fought through plenty of conflict and baggage. I will never truly know what changed in Marianne. Instead I will inevitably invent an explanation to simplify the story for myself and to answer the questions I will get about it.

Are Christians Anything Like Jesus? Gateway Church commissioned a study to gauge if Christians’ attitudes and actions were more like Jesus or more like the religious leaders of his day, the Pharisees, who opposed him. I won’t spoil the findings, but being a Christian doesn’t automatically turn you into a perfect person. And it’s still too easy to focus on other people’s weaknesses, rather than our own. And too easy to get caught up in rules rather being loving. Click to read the results or take the survey.

Other topics that caught my eye this week:

• How to be Decisive - might have helped me with my car search.
• Fluent in Context-ese - good reminder that you don’t have to understand all the words in a foreign language.
• Lessons from Traveling - some useful trips for my next trip...to Paris!

In less than a week I will be in Paris! With my Mom! Speaking French! Eating French food and drinking French wine! In cute outdoor cafes or in the park! Seeing French people and sights! Can’t wait! Au revoir!

Language Hacking Success - Brazil

I'm back from Brazil now, and I have to say that Language Hacking really worked well for me. Kudos to Benny the Irish Polyglot. After two months of studying, I was able to have simple conversations and get complimented on how good my Portuguese was. In particular I was able to:

• Order and pay at restaurants - including asking about an incorrect bill
• Buy baked goods and other items at grocery stores
• Ask for directions
• Check into a hotel
• Get help shopping for gifts
• Ask people about themselves and their families
• Ask to have my flight changed to the same itinerary as my wife's
• Joke around

Brazilians make it very easy to practice Portuguese. They aren't uptight about the language and they love it if you smile and joke around. When I went into stores, very few people spoke English, which is really helpful. It avoids the situations where they feel the need to put you out of your language misery by speaking your native tongue. Instead, we would just smile and laugh while I used filler comments called connectors until I figured out another way to say what I wanted.

I was amused by the number of people who asked me if I used Rosetta Stone to learn Portuguese. They're definitely doing their marketing well - I even saw a kiosk in the airport.

Here are the learning techniques I used to prepare before the trip - mostly taken from Fluent in Three Months:

• Studied a Lonely Planet phrasebook for Brazilian Portuguese
• Found a co-worker who speaks Portuguese and had three conversation sessions with him
• Practiced greetings and pronunciations with a Brazilian vendor at the local farmers market
• Learned numbers, colors, food, phrases, and pronunciation from a language CD by Euro Talk Now
• Watched Brazilian movies from Netflix, first with English subtitles, then with Portuguese subtitles
• Used Anki Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) flashcard program and iPhone app to study connectors, phrasebook vocabulary, and finance-specific terms
• Wrote emails in Portuguese to co-workers in Brazil using Google Translate as a supplement
• Changed my iPhone, iTunes, and Facebook language settings to Portuguese

Once I arrived, I just kept in mind that I had to go out and speak in order to improve. And I had to replace the anxious look I get when I can't find the words or understand everything. Instead I focused on smiling, nodding, and using filler comments.

As an aside, some of my favorite words are "otimo" (o-chimo), meaning "great"; "legal" (lay-gow), meaning "cool", and "moleza" (mo-lay-zah), meaning "piece of cake". I also like that futebol (soccer) is pronounced "fu-tchy-bol" and PowerPoint is "powerpoin-tchy".

I can't write about a trip without a section on food, so here goes. I had amazing pizza there (who knew there was such a huge Italian influence?). I ate delicious cuts of meat at the Fogo de Chao churrascaria (Brazilian barbecue). Every lunch buffet was full of deliciously savory sauces and spreads. We went to a great sushi restaurant (who knew there was such a huge Japanese influence?).

The draft beers ("choppe") were heavenly smooth - with Devassa's Negra as my favorite. But the best was the Pao de Queijo - cheese bread. Not just lower-case cheese bread. More like a glorious merger of light francese rolls and melted longhorn cheddar cheese at perfect nacho consistency so that it pulls away in a long string and falls all the way down past your chin when it finally snaps. Good thing I have a ten-year visa, because I may have to buy another ticket soon.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning Portuguese, but it was even more fun to learn so many tips to learn any language. I plan to shift my focus from Portuguese, which means it will join my ever-fading traveler's knowledge of Italian. We're traveling to Zambia in two months, so I'm going to apply all the techniques I just learned to my study of Bemba. I want to see if I can accelerate my learning pace. At the same time, I'm going to start brushing up on Spanish, with a goal of being conversational by next summer.

What language would you like to learn?

Update on Brazil and Portuguese

Full disclosure - I wouldn't be writing this post if Benny the Irish Polyglot hadn't told me to. I'm reading his Language Hacking Guide and I reached the section where he said I had to start a log of my language journey. I resisted for about four hours. Since I paid money for the book, I might as well try what it says.

This morning I asked a few questions in Portuguese while taking to the guy working the hummus stand at the farmers market. His name is Gilbert ("Zhilbayr"), he's really friendly, and he's from Brazil. Those last two comments seem to always go together. Brazilians have a reputation as being very friendly. My extensive data sample of three supports this generalization. Gilbert loved the questions I had and completely ignored my mistakes. The whole interaction was a lot of fun and very encouraging.

The part I'm struggling with is around Benny's advice to have a few main goals, some mini-goals that will get me there, and a plan for how to do it. Articulating my main goals specifically is not turning out to be so easy. I'm just going to have to jot something down and refine it as I go. Vaguely, I want to be able to get around Sao Paulo on as little English as possible. That's three weeks from now. I'll have some business meetings with a few people who speak no English, so I want to be able to talk about accounting and processes as much as possible with them. Also - I want to know enough to win over the visa officer at the Brazil consulate in San Francisco next week so I can get our visas issued as quickly as possible. (Otherwise I can't even go on the trip.)

I like Benny's book and the advice on his blog. (I even wish I had thought of it years ago.) Finding the discipline and the time to follow his recommendations isn't easy. But the easy way - not having goals or a plan - won't result in any language progress at all. So I'll keep reading the book, resisting his advice because it requires effort, and then caving in and following it after all.

How to Learn a Language in a Month (I Hope)

I’m headed to Brazil on a business trip next month. I love to travel, so I’m totally stoked. Most of all, I love going to countries with foreign languages. Every time, I dream of being fluent in the language. But it’s not that easy, is it?

Failure of Spanish Classes

I took Spanish in the eighth grade, and loved it. My suburban Houston neighborhood was not what you would call diverse. My Spanish class opened my eyes to the reality of a different culture and language. I had never realized how surreal it would be to express the same thought in two different languages. Doing so was like solving a cryptogram puzzle. And every day, every lesson, brought an exciting new technique for solving them. Every homework was a new set of cryptograms that we had just learned how to crack.

There’s a problem, though. After four years of classes, I couldn’t carry a conversation. I was – and am – intimidated by the awkwardness of trying the first clumsy sentence. So it’s easier to speak English, even around family members who are native Spanish speakers. Twenty years ago I had – or should have had – the keys to the language. But I could never get the lock to turn.

Now I want to learn Portuguese. I only have about three weeks. Four years of classes aren’t an option, even if I thought they would work this time. Should I spend a four hundred bucks on Rosetta Stone? Practice all 300 words and 20 phrases on the EuroTalk CD that came as part of a 33-disc set? Subscribe to a Portuguese podcast? I know, buy an app! Hmmm.

How I became fluent in French

I started learning French in the eleventh grade. I actually walked around the corner from my sixth-period Spanish III class directly to my seventh-period French I class. I spoke a lot of Spanish to my French teacher, much to her annoyance. Every lesson was just as revelatory and every homework just as much of a delightful puzzle as Spanish was. And after finishing French IV, I was…not fluent. Barely even conversational. I got college credit, read some cool stories by existential French authors, and was too intimidated to speak to French foreign exchange students. Same approach, same outcome.

But I am fluent now. I got there, but how? I know it happened in the Peace Corps, but why?. During training, they made us follow “immersion”. We couldn’t speak any English to anyone while we were on the campus. Only French. It was not fun. We hated it and complained. Of course, we were also hot, homesick, feverish from the vaccines, and cramping from intestinal revolts. So Mr. Immersion did not come along while we were at our best.

But we did speak French. We didn’t feel ready, and we weren’t. We still had more lessons to take, more grammar to learn, more vocabulary to remember. But we spoke it anyway. And everyone we spoke to would only speak French back to us. They didn’t even know English. (Or rather, they lied and said they didn’t.)
Immersion certainly worked. It succeeded at the task that an hour a day of exposure in a high-school classroom failed to achieve.

For the next three years I refused to speak English to my Beninese co-workers. I told them it would hinder the language mastery I needed in order to educate the students we shared. Every night I wrote out lesson plans in French. I read French translations of novels I enjoyed, like Jurassic Park. And I let my students correct my mistakes. Until by the end of the school year I was correcting their mistakes. (The class applauded the first time I did so.)

So how does this help me with Portuguese? My co-workers at the office certainly aren’t going to switch to speaking only Portuguese with me. Even if they did, I need something to study, and I need more time – at least six months.

A Different Approach

Right after I downloaded a few iPhone apps with Portuguese vocabulary – they were free – I ran across something useful on Twitter. (Yes – it happens. You don’t think the Library of Congress is archiving the whole thing for nothing, do you?) It was titled “The Learning Secrets of Polyglots and Savants.” It described someone who learned enough Icelandic to hold a conversation after just one week - with an interview to prove it. OK, it turns out the guy is a savant who memorized pi to a gajillion places. (Which I’m totally jealous of, by the way.) But the next guy mentioned was just a regular Irish guy who learned enough Dutch to hold a conversation after only two months - with an interview to prove it. That’s twice as much time as I have, but still gives me hope.

The article described some memory techniques I’ve read about in the last few years. Our brains are wired to be really, really good at recalling places and images, especially when they involve action. Spend an extra 60 seconds coming up with an action image that represents what you want to memorize, and it will stick with you for hours and days, not just a few minutes. Another technique is graduated-interval recall, which involves reviewing the material at ever-longer intervals in order to lock it into the next level of memory, with the least amount of repetition.

Even with these optimization techniques, I’m going to have to prioritize. That’s a dilemma on its own. What do I focus on? Vocabulary covers a lot of ground. Should it be verbs? Travel phrases? Food? Numbers?Days?Colors?Animals?Shopping?VerbTensesPronounsPrepositionsPartsofspeech?????

I googled the-Irish-guy-who-learned-Dutch-in-two-months. He calls himself the Irish Polyglot (a more concise title), and has a website titled Fluent in Three Months. He travels to a new country every three months to learn a new language. I’m even more jealous of him than of the gajillion-places-of-pi guy.

His website gave me one validation and two clues to resolving my dilemma. The validation is that you simply have to start speaking the language. From Day One. No waiting until you’re “ready.” The first clue is to memorize phrases and vocabulary from a phrasebook like the ones by Lonely Planet. The other clue will cause raucous laughter from friends who’ve heard me try karaoke: put the phrases to music, and sing them. For the good of society, I’ll just try that in my head, not out loud. Much.

Implementation

So I’m totally stoked. I bought the Lonely Planet Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook. It totally reminded me of the LP Bengali phrasebook that some friends brought on a mission trip, from which we learned the phrase “Careful. The monkey is stealing your food.” I’m going to create action images, and set them to music (in my head). I’m even going to write my own dialogs and memorize them, the way I prepared my lessons in the Peace Corps. And I’m going to be mentally prepared to just start speaking the language. First with the hummus vendor at the farmer’s market; then with everyone I meet when I get off the plane in Sao Paulo. The only problem is that I’m much better at creating a plan than following through. And I need plane tickets.

Any ideas for how I can make a living by traveling and learning languages?

Returning to Africa

For four years we’ve been talking about a trip to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. I blame my gym for publishing an article about the climb in their monthly magazine. After six months of serious discussions and research, we finally bought tickets to go to Zambia instead. Paying a team to babysit us up the mountain costs double the airfare just to get to Africa. Instead we’re going to relive our Peace Corps days by visiting a volunteer we know in Zambia. In the classic writing style of “threes”, here are the four things I love about traveling to Africa.

Flying

I love flying. Particularly long, international flights. I love the little tin-foil wrapped meals they serve, even in coach. Air France is the best – don’t get me started. I love buying the Economist magazine. I can almost read all the articles on an eight-hour flight. I love watching the in-flight movies, especially on those screens built into the seat in front of you. I love navigating new airports in foreign countries, where you never know which languages will be on their signs or if English will be one of them. Most of all, I love holding my wife’s hand on take-off and landing.

The Culture – Hospitality, Language, Food

Africans are friendly and inviting. People are friendly everywhere, but Africans tend to be less hurried, and more inclined to welcome you into their home. It’s fun to kick off your sandals and sit down to a conversation over a beer or shot of moonshine. They’re always eager to talk about American politics, European policies, or soccer.

Languages in Africa fascinate me as well. First there is the official language – usually English or French. Both are spoken with accents that are unique to Africa. I picked up such a distinct African accent to my French that a hotel clerk in Paris said I “spoke like a black man.” Then there are the idiomatic expressions from the indigenous languages that have been translated directly into French or English. For example “It’s been three days” which means “It’s been a while since we saw each other.” (The response is “And one more [day].”) I love picking up as much of the local language as I can. It’s like a puzzle, and I love the looks I get when no one expects the American visitor to know Fon, or Swahili, or Bemba.

I love trying new foods when I travel. I enjoy finding new tastes, textures, and combinations. I also love the customs that go with it, whether it means eating only with your right hand, or eating in a certain order, or sharing from one dish. When the food is completely unusual, like fried termites, I savor the challenge of overcoming my own culinary biases. And I enjoy the pleasure it gives my hosts when I show them that a visitor is willing to try their cuisine.

Peace Corps Volunteers

By Marcus Chance
All Rights Reserved

Volunteers, or PCVs, are an adventurous, idealistic bunch, and they know how to throw great parties on low budgets. They don’t have “happy hours”, they have “happy weekends”.  I know because I was a PCV in Benin, West Africa from 1994-1997. We can spend hours swapping stories about misguided host families, outrageous taxi rides, and confused country directors. It’s a joy watching volunteers converse in the local language with their neighbors, and they can always show you the best eatery, chill-out spot, and nature vista their village has to offer.

By Marcus Chance
All Rights Reserved

Nature Photography

I’m a sucker for sweeping vistas, and I always want to take them home with me. That’s what our Canon Powershot is for. Africa is full of bright colors: deep green forests, rust brown trails, shimmering blue skies, golden savannahs, and aqua rivers. Throw in some wildlife, like elephants, hippos, zebras, or chickens. Extra credit for photos from a rainforest canopy hike or a canoe trip across a lake.

Yes, I’m quite excited about our trip that’s just six months away. Really excited. Extremely excited. Airplanes, languages, food, photography, oh my. We get to spend time with an Austin friend in Zambia. I get to travel with my wife on her first trip to Africa. We’ll go to Victoria falls and either a walking or canoeing safari. And I’ll come back with tons of photos and stories for my blog.

Do you like traveling? Why or why not?