holetun chitore

A long time ago I realized that watching stuff while making stuff (bookish stuff, in this case) was brutally decreasing my productivity, so I decided to listen to stuff instead.  So I went to the library and got some books on CDs and loaded them on my computer and listened to them while screwing around with glue and paint and paper and things.  Then one day I decided to go to the gym with Mom which is weird because I was deeply anti-gym at the time, and though our tradition is to read books while plugging along on stationary bikes, I decided to test the hypothesis that my anti-gym sentiments sprang from boredom and lack of feeling like anything worthwhile or notable was happening to my body, because I was just slowly plodding along on a stationary bike.  So, I brought by iPod with a book loaded on it and stair mastered my way into pro-gym feelings and pro-listening to things feelings.  Then I got so into the book I was listening to, I started listening to it during my 20 min commute to work.  This growing dependence on listen-y things to make life bearable and happy led me to spend some time cruising around the library, browsing their audio selections, which thing I had never really cared to do previously.  And it was there, on a rare trip to the Central library (rather than the lil' branch down the road), following the shelves of CD cases snaking along the wall, that I turned a corner and stumbled upon the language-learning CDs.
 And now my life is FOREVER CHANGED.

My new addiction in life is Pimsler Short Courses.  4 CDs, 8 courses, learn how to say Excuse me, do you speak _____, I understand a little ______, Where is _______ Street?, I would like a ___(culturally appropriate beverage)____ in ANY LANGUAGE EVER.  So far I have mastered these essential phrases (and maaaany more, sort of) in German and Farsi.  Yesterday I started on Italian, which ooooooh my gosh is so nice and easy and natural after the Farsi, lemme tell you.  The funny thing is that since it's all audio, I have no idea how to spell anything in any of these languages.  So the title of this post is how my brain interpreted the spelling of "How are you?" in Farsi, but um I am embarrassed to admit that I'm not sure if it even uses the same alphabet?  For reals if someone wants to google that for me that would be ok.  The library has like 5 or 10 more of these babies in Portuguese, Cantonese, Hindi, Egyptian Arabic, and I can't think of what the other ones were, but yeah so this will last me a looooong happy time, and I will know a most-likely-never-to-be-used-again smidgeon of a lot of different languages.  So basically no matter what unlikely nation eventually takes over and becomes our oppressive overlords, I will hopefully know just enough to be able to sweet talk the stormtroopers and score some black market perks.  Excuse me sir, I am going to lunch at the Hotel La-Le.  Would you like a cup of chai?