Fluent in 3 months » travel

Is long-term solo travel… lonely?

Benny — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:03:04 +0000

Photo taken using my camera's auto-timer of course...

Whether or not I feel lonely in travelling by myself for such a long time is one of the biggest questions I get asked when people hear about my lifestyle of over eight years of solo travel, and something I’ll tell you all about today. What you read may surprise you!

“Isn’t travelling alone… lonely?” I get this question several times a week, both in person and via email.

I find it very interesting and curious, because the question itself is loaded with presumptions and bias.

To show you what I mean, picture this:

The non-travel lonely lifestyle

For four years I studied Electronic Engineering in UCD (Dublin) – one of the country’s most demanding courses, with full time classes (9am-6pm, Mon-Fri), some evening courses, labs, homework, incredible amounts of studying for very complex course material (including quantum physics and very advanced applied Mathematics) and a looming sixteen examinations at the end of the year, where if you fail just one of those many examinations, you have to repeat the entire year!

Because of this it had the highest failure rate of any course at the university, and many people would simply not make it through to the next year. With my drive though, I didn’t just want to pass, but to get a first class honours to ensure better opportunities later in life.

The pressures of this course meant that I poured my whole life into it, and barely had any social life in college, and definitely no girlfriend or even time to “play around”. I got up, went to class, came home, studied and did assignments, watched TV by myself to relax and then all weekend long gave private Mathematics lessons to schoolkids to help me fund the expenses of living in Dublin.

I went out to parties about six times a year. Not quite the fun college lifestyle I was seeing on my TV shows.

It doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to realize that this was a very lonely lifestyle. And yet how many times over the four years do you think people asked me “Are you lonely as an electronic engineering student?”

Zero.

The thing is, many lifestyles are lonely. A single mother who has to work two jobs, people who are settled away from their home town for work purposes who find it hard to make new friends, unhappy introverts, and thousands of other types of people stuck in situations and routines they see no way out of. And yet nobody ever asks them how lonely they are. I am very sure that so many people reading this post feel the same way.

It has always struck me as unfair that travellers (who do this by choice) are the privileged few to be asked this question, when so many other people who have no choice on the matter would need to share their frustrations much more than us.

And the ironic thing about it all? I’m way less lonely now and way happier about my life than I ever was as a “settled” student in Dublin.

What is lonely?

The thing about the question is that it has really leaves a lot to be defined. Lonely compared to what? Compared to before I started travelling? Compared to you? Compared to locals where I am? Compared to a “typical” single guy my age? Compared to a a married guy with children and an active social life?

The thing is, there are many aspects of loneliness. You can be lonely even if surrounded by people who know you because you feel they don’t “get” you, you can be lonely in a long-term relationship because you realise it isn’t going great, you can be lonely because you are stuck in a routine and not having deep conversations with people etc.

It just seems so obvious to many people that I must feel lonely as a solo traveller, since I don’t have the same person physically constantly there with me. But to me loneliness depends way more on the person’s mindset than on their situation.

By getting over the shy delusion, and maintaining some personality when I meet new people, I can make new friends very quickly, generally no matter where I am. Some places have been tougher to do this, but with persistence I always make one or several true friends.

“But you can’t make a true friend in just a few months!!” Of course, I disagree. Like learning a language, you can either take many many years to piece together aspects of a relationship, or you can do it intensively and get to know someone quicker and open yourself up to them at a much deeper level, even in a short time.

In Ireland we say “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet”. I keep this philosophy on the road, and don’t restrict my definition of friend to the sadly restrictive one of someone who I have known since childhood. No matter where you are on the road, if you are open to making a new friend – either with other travellers like yourself, or (more ideally) with those from the location you are visiting – you will never feel alone.

The need to have someone there

As well as this, there are certain people who definitely need company more than others. Despite many crazy posts on this blog implying that I’m a 24-hour party animal, I actually spend most of my time on my computer by myself.

And I’m quite happy with this. Some people may desperately need people there all the time (so-called “extroverts”) and some are quite happy by themselves, reading a book, surfing the net, or working on some interesting project.

Even when I’m on my computer, I’m not actually alone. I video Skype my parents every week and feel like I’m back home with the camera in the living room and the fact that I can show them around my place. I chat to great friends of mine from all around the world to see how they are doing via Facebook. To some this “virtual” connection may seem meaningless or superficial, but to me it’s the next best thing to actually being there with someone.

If I’ve had a rough day, I can tell someone about it. Even if I’m in a country where not a single person knows my name, I can always open myself up thanks to the level of connectivity of the 21st century.

So thanks to the Internet and anybody I know being just a phonecall away, I am never truly alone. And that’s forgetting the fantastic local friends I am making that I can open myself up to.

The loneliness and friendships that comes from hurried travel

This year has been a bit different compared to my normal 3-month stays. I decided at the start of the year that I’d have many intensive language and cultural immersion missions, which has ultimately totalled learning six languages. It’s been fun, but next year I will be back to mostly three month stays (starting in January by learning a language I’m not even vaguely familiar with from scratch to fluency, more appropriate to the blog title).

One reason that I’m looking forward to returning to my slower pace is that this year has been more stressful than most because of the lack of deeper relationships due to a quicker pace of travel and other obstacles. I only spent a month in Puerto Galera for example, and adjusted to the local culture slower than usual, so I didn’t make any local life-long friends sadly. I was in Amsterdam and Istanbul for two months each, but I found the Dutch to be very reluctant to make friends with me when I was honest about leaving so soon, and I was ill for most of my stay in Turkey so I wasn’t out much with the very friendly Turks.

Even so, despite these setbacks I made some real friends in these two places that I will stay in touch with for life. It’s harder, but it’s always possible. Even after a measly five days in Cali, I managed to make some incredibly deep friendships and enter into aspects of the locals’ lives that I feel few visitors ever will. Even in short stays you can make friends that count.

As well as this, as the world gets smaller, you start to bump into more and more people as your paths cross again and again. For example, I’ve met Gary Arndt, Matt Kepnes, Rob “Bloggeries”, Scott Young, Jodi Ettenberg, Karol Gajda and actually dozens of others numerous times in various cities, countries, and continents. Not really intentionally, just that our paths happen to cross frequently from common interests. As fellow travellers, I find it very easy to pick up where I left off with each of them, especially since we understand the life of a vagabond (or vagablogger…) and can relate to one another in that way.

Even here in Peru I’ve been hanging out with Dave, my friend from Medellín.

The world is smaller than you think

In Couchsurfing, we have a saying that “The world is smaller than you think”, and I genuinely believe this. You can feel like a little spec alone in the vast lonely universe, or you can accept that we have so many things in common with one another, and that this brings us all closer together.

Perhaps I won’t be meeting someone who I click with perfectly around every corner, but the diversity is what makes this all the more interesting; especially when you see all the things you do actually share with someone despite thousands of kilometres of separation your whole life and a very different culture and upbringing.

Rather than focus on all the reasons why I could feel lonely, I like to look at it with a more “glass is half full” perspective . Loneliness is a state of mind, not a state of latitude and longitude . I simply refuse to think myself into loneliness, the same way I refuse to whine about how hard everything is. Such negative thoughts are self fulfilling prophecies.

The fact that I travel solo encourages me all the more to meet new people, to get outside of my comfort zone, and of course to learn much more about the local language and culture. The “mission” aspect of my travels and the work I do on this site gives me lots to focus on, whereas if I was just a rich kid bouncing around with no purpose, then I’d probably have plenty of time to think myself into loneliness.

I’m very grateful for my current lifestyle. I know I won’t be travelling forever – when I feel like I’ve had enough, I can always decide to settle down and become a long-term part of a community. Until then, such loneliness questions are not something that I ever have on my mind, other than to assure people asking the question that I’m doing quite OK

Of course, the aspect of finding love on the road and how that can contribute to feeling a deep connection and avoiding loneliness is a very different kettle of fish, which I’ll come back to in another post to give it the detail it deserves!

Hopefully this post helps put the first two biggest questions in perspective! Thanks as always for reading along and share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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Is long-term solo travel… lonely? is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

How I escaped from being locked up by the Brazilian Federal police [Travel story]

Benny — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:24:43 +0000

As you can imagine, with over eight years on the road, I have had quite a few things happen to me. Today I’m going to share one of my many (mis)adventures.

It takes place in 2006, in Rio – my first time in the city. I would come back three years later to live there and learn the local dialect of Portuguese (carioquês), but in this visit I just had two things I needed to do: see some touristy sites, and renew my travel visa.

I had already spent three amazing months in Brazil; most of it on the paradise island of Florianópolis (Floripa), and travelling through Porto Alegre, Curitiba and hanging around São Paulo state, going deep into it to a wonderful town called Votuporanga – where I was the first “gringo” (foreigner) most of them had ever met.

For this whole time I had been speaking Portuguese, and this enhanced my experience to an incredible level with the friendships I could make and experiences I could have. To this day, Brazilians remain my favourite people on the planet. Those three months were the happiest I had ever been in my life…

Until I got to Rio.

The “simple” visa renewal procedure

I could have renewed my visa in Curitiba or São Paulo very easily – all you need to do is go into a Federal Police station and go through some bureaucracy and they’ll do it for you. Other travellers assured me that it’s a sinch.

Staying longer was a no-brainer for me. I really wanted to spend three more months in Brazil so that I could experience the World Cup atmosphere there. I had already arranged for accommodation and arranged to meet friends and had many many plans for travels in the Northeast in the coming three months. Renewing a visa just seemed like a minor formality.

Before even looking at the Cristo statue or Sugar Loaf Mountain, I went straight to the Federal Police station. Doing so in the most touristy city in the country was a bad idea, since they are so overworked, but the later I renew the visa, the longer my 3 extra months counts. I went in a few days before my current visa was to expire.

After waiting for several hours, I finally got in only to discover that the fee for renewal had to be paid to a bank and I had to present the payment receipt. They wouldn’t accept cash. Annoyed as hell for all the time wasting, I went to a bank, paid and returned and lost my place in the line and had to wait all over again. I skipped lunch so I could just get this overwith.

Finally it was my turn again, after waiting most of the day in sweat and starting to get hungry. I was very much impatient and just wanted the stamp already.

My run-in with the federal police officer

The same lady saw me again and told me to take a seat. She examined my passport and glanced back up at me suspiciously, as I came in with a disgruntled look and was speaking impatiently to get this overwith. She didn’t even look at my payment receipt. She looked me in the eye and said “I think you want to work illegally in Brazil”.

What?? Of course not, I insisted.

I produced a bank statement I prepared just in case, and showed her my credit card that has a decent limit on it. I had saved up in advance thanks to a convenient well-paid English teaching job in France just before, with plans not to work at all here, and was not spending much on accommodation as usual, so my money was taking me far.

You say you’re a tourist here for the first time – then why are you speaking Portuguese so well??

The exchange was taking place in Portuguese of course. This was one of the few times that speaking a local language has ever worked against me. The real problem was that she was stressed out from talking to impatient tourists all day, and needed to lash out on someone. When you deal with lazy English-only tourists all day as your full time job, my story of having picked up Portuguese in just a few months must have seemed hard-to-swallow.

She didn’t believe my retorts and said that she reckons three months is more than enough time for me in Brazil, and it’s time to go home. She stamped my passport with a one week extension, which meant I couldn’t have gone to another federal police station instead. That was it… I had to leave Brazil and my plans evaporated because I was acting impatient and because of one surely woman.

My mistake: Asking for trouble

Now, what I should have done was to just go back to the hostel and accept this. But I was mighty pissed off. Hungry, thirsty and now being sent away with nothing when I had such wonderful plans.

I went back to the line of people waiting for their visa extensions and vented. I did it a little too enthusiastically though. I cursed this woman as a sexually deprived witch with a stick up her ass, and suggested that they go renew their visas in any other place than this hellhole. I was yelling my curses in a mixture of English and Portuguese.

What I didn’t know was that there was a small window to her office in the wall above me and she heard everything.

Oops.

She stormed over to me and told me to come to her this instant. Suddenly, I (conveniently) couldn’t understand Portuguese any more and hastened towards the exit instead. Thinking I had gotten away from her, I was amazed to see several police officers running towards me. I didn’t run away – I was just confused about what was happening. They got to me, slammed me on the floor, handcuffed me and threw me into a locked room.

Locked up with time to think

When you are handcuffed in a locked room in a Brazilian Federal police station, while very hungry and thirsty, you start to look at things from a different perspective.

Rather than get scared, I actually got even more angry. But after two hours passed, the anger started to subside.

I started to realise how idiotic what I just did was. Insulting a federal police officer is probably a punishable crime here. I was in deep shit. Maybe they would officially arrest me – with a criminal record I’d never get into so many countries, and I’d have trouble finding work. I may even have to spend more time locked up before they deport me. My life could be ruined by this.

There has to be a way out of this.

I looked around the room scrambling my thoughts trying to remember if I had seen MacGayver escape from a maximum security prison with just a paperclip and a napkin. No use.

Think Benny!!

Some hours later, in comes a very angry looking man with huge muscles and a look in him that told me that the lady I insulted was his sister. You and I are going to have a little talk he said as he threw down some papers including my passport, and some complicated looking forms we were probably going to fill out, onto the table. He then walked out of the room to get something else.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

F&%k!! What’ll I do??

Thinking up my defence, or threatening with something weak like that I’ll get the Irish embassy on you for this outrage! made me realise that it’s precisely what he’ll expect. Another arrogant tourist thinking he can do what he wants.

And then it hit me. I knew precisely what I was going to do to get out of this. It was my only option, but I had to try it. I had to surprise this officer with the last thing he would ever expect.

As pissed off and hungry as I was, I forced myself to imagine all the saddest things I could – when I had to bury my pet turtle Torlinus as a child, when the first girl I asked out turned me down harshly… and everything else I could. Sad thoughts, sad thoughts. And I forced myself to tear up.

By the time he came back I was ready for my Oscar award winning performance. I cried like a little girl.

I’m so sorry!! [sniff] I didn’t mean to say what I did – it was such a stupid thing to do. I’m so scared – I don’t want to go to jail!

Three months in this country and other times in other Latin countries taught me that when you are dealing with macho men of the calibre of what I was looking at, they simply thrive on conflict and pissing competitions. An argument would have been the worst thing to go for, and so, I went for the opposite. It’s possible that he had never even seen a grown man cry right in front of him, especially in the dramatic way that I was doing it. He suddenly started feeling very awkward.

Pull yourself together! Stop this nonsense – we need to talk!

- [sob] I… I… I’m so sorry! [sob] Waaaah!

He couldn’t get a word in, and then I got the break I was hoping for.

He threw the passport at me, and said Get out of my sight! You’re pathetic! … ignoring all the other forms, and reminding me that I had just over a week to get out of Brazil.

I walked out, still sobbing, and apologised to the lady and continued out, still looking like a wreck until I was a block away and sure nobody from there could see me, and then I laughed out loud. I had “escaped from federal police custody” using tears. Haha!

My consolation prize

I was still pissed off about having to leave Brazil, but at least I got myself out of the hole I had stupidly dug for myself. I got back to my hostel, looking like crap and the receptionist asked me how my day was. When I told her, she exclaimed That was you!? Come here!

It turned out my story was doing the rounds already!

She brought me to the hall where I was greeted with a cheer by one of the people who had also been in the line renewing his visa. He saw my outburst and hand-cuff detainment and had told the whole hostel the story. Luckily he was long gone by the less admirable crying part of the story. I was greeted with a hero’s welcome, and spent the rest of my time in Rio knowing the entire hostel.

I got to see the Cristo statue up close for free because a group going there found a taxi driver who would bring them and explain the history, but he only spoke Portuguese and so they requested the “famous” foreign Portuguese speaker to be an interpreter and covered my share of the taximan’s hefty fee for my troubles. Having the reputation I did in the whole hostel made sure that I had a fantastic time in Rio, before I did finally have to head back to Europe.

And of course I got an important humbling lesson to not push my luck too much and try to avoid getting into trouble in future. Five years later, and lots more travel experience under my belt, you can bet I’d handle the same situation very differently now!

Since I had brought this on myself, I had no hard feelings about Rio and was happy to come back a few years later. I’ve been in a few very different jams since, but whenever something terrible is happening you have to remember that you will be able to look back on it and laugh some day, especially if you can figure out how to get yourself out of it by whatever means necessary.

Even the worst thing in the world could turn out to be a funny story or open a door to something very interesting if you think straight.

If you liked the story of my “escape”, let me know in the comments!
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How I escaped from being locked up by the Brazilian Federal police [Travel story] is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Frequently asked questions for a long term traveller

Benny — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:12:13 +0000

The post I wrote over the summer about the 29 life lessons learned in 8 years travelling, stirred up a lot of interest (it’s been read by almost a half a million individuals) but it led to a lot of questions. Some I have hinted to in various blog posts, but I’m going to try and cover a small number of the ones that crop up the most, here.

Firstly about the work practicality, and secondly about the psychological aspect of long-term travel.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask in the comments (and don’t forget to read the comments to see other questions and answers!) and I may write another post about it, or just answer it directly in comments.

Next week I’ll have a post about frequently asked questions in language learning, so be sure to ask that too by sending me an email if you have already searched for it on the site and not found an answer, and if it’s interesting I’ll add it to the next FAQ post!

How do you get work everywhere?

I’m not rich, so I have to pay for all of this somehow! Funding yourself on the road boils down to three major ways as I see it:

1. Apply for a visa formally, especially if you are a special case

When I wanted to work in the states, I applied for the J1 visa as this special case is for students only. The fact that I had another university year coming up was the “guarantee” that I wasn’t going to stay and work illegally, and the visa expired after a few months.

Thanks to this visa I could work standard jobs: my first time as a Mathematics teacher for Johns Hopkins University, and the second time as a yoga store manager (long story, the start of which being that I didn’t have a clue what yoga was).

It’s impossible to give encompassing advice here as it depends on your nationality, the target country, your work experience, your education/skills, etc. etc. So please ask your student’s union, request information from your embassy and ask in forums online where people are in pretty much the same situation as you. Unless you are an Irish student applying specifically to go to America, my advice would not be useful to you.

Another option is that if you are very employable, the company may arrange your visa. This is common in some countries for English teachers, and even the University I worked for told me that they would have arranged the visa for me if I hadn’t arranged it myself.

Teaching English is of course the easiest way for native English speakers to find work, but your chances increase dramatically if you stay away from places with tough competition. When I moved from Paris to Toulouse in France, I found it much easier to find work as an English teacher.

Yet another option is to apply for a volunteer program. They will cover your food and board, but you usually have to cover your flights and you will not save up any money. The advantage here is since you are not getting paid, you do not need a working permit, but the problem is that you need to have saved up money in advance.

There are many solutions to this problem, so try to be inventive and do as much research as you can for your particular case. Here are some links for some inspiration:

How to get an EU work permit

How to live abroad legally without going broke

2. Get paid “under the table”

Go as a tourist and get paid in cash unofficially. While not ideal, since you are breaking the law, it is a very very common way for travellers to cover themselves. I’d only recommend doing this temporarily as you would be counted as an illegal immigrant otherwise and are not protected by law from unfair treatment.

The easiest way for me to do this was to give private English lessons. I would go to people’s homes and get paid in cash. They would be happy since they aren’t paying more fees for a third-party, and I could still charge much more than local minimum wage because of my teaching experience.

But the problem with this is that it is extremely difficult if you aren’t trying hard to speak the local language. Advertising, taking phone calls, finding contacts etc. is something you can’t do in English alone in many places because the whole point is that they are getting in touch with you to learn English.

There are many other interesting options, such as working at a youth hostel, and manual labour etc. depending on how flexible you are in what you would do and what you can do. On the road, you become more flexible.

3. Work location independently

This is what I’m currently doing. Basically I don’t worry about working visas anymore because all of my work is officially taking place back home. Tax numbers, bank accounts etc. are in the country you are normally resident in (have an address in), and you do the work from a distance.

To do this, you have to go through the process in your home country of applying for a VAT number and so on. Once again this depends on where you are.

When you are in various countries, a tourist visa is all you need because you are only bringing money into the country and not taking any (pretty much the definition of tourist).

For several years I did this as a freelance translator and I now earn from this blog. The links explain how I do both. Among the obvious advantage of freedom, this also means that you will earn in your home currency (in my case euro), which can be very advantageous in many countries with a cheaper currency.

To see how you would do this, you have to see if your skill can be done entirely from a distance. The vast majority of work that takes place on a computer (writing, photo/video editing, coding, data entry, research, Skype-based consultation, and thousands of other jobs) does not require you to sit in an office in any particular place thanks to the Internet.

You can propose to your boss that you get paid less if s/he lets you take your work home. After a period of working down the road, take it on the road. But many bosses can take a lot of convincing for this.

As a freelancer you have the problem of constantly having to look for work yourself, but a great trade-off is to work with an outsourcer. As a translator I only pitched my skills to three major companies that looked for the work for me and paid me themselves. They were obviously charging the end-client more money, but I didn’t have to worry about finding more work because of this process. Finding such a company depends on your industry.

Two major outsourcer websites that are more general for computer-based jobs are e-lance and odesk. I haven’t worked for these sites myself, but I do hire on them all the time! I’ve gotten help coding this site, and more famously direct help in travelling via an “assistant”, and paid them via this site.

I have also met people in my travels who travel and earn from these sites, but finding well paid work can be a challenge, as most people do not pay very highly due to cheaper options around the world just as freely available. It is more of a practical solution if you are travelling in a cheap country.

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This is just about 1,000 words on working abroad – there is so much more information you can find if you search hard enough. If no option here could work for you, please use your imagination! I do not find work only because I’m a white EU citizen – while this gives me many advantages, there are many times when I have had to think on my feet to find a solution.

If it’s harder for you, don’t whine about that – harder does NOT mean impossible. It’s harder for everybody when inaction is the approach. Flexibility and accepting that you may have to work for peanuts will ensure that you can do this.

The worst paid job I’ve ever had was €10/day in Rome (an expensive European city). Accommodation was included, but food was not. Despite that, I made this work. Rather than dreaming about finding the best paid job, realise that being frugal will give you way more freedom. That job in Rome was in a youth hostel, and one of my favourite working experiences ever.

Learn to spend less money and you’ll need to earn way less.

How do you feel about not having a stable group of friends and family around?

There are many ways to look at these issues. The following works for me:

Be more flexible on who you call a friend. Stop being shy, and talk to new people you meet. In Ireland we have a saying: A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet. I make new friends wherever I go, and am very open to developing that friendship deeper. You CAN make a lifelong connection even in a very short time; the only thing really stopping this most of the time is convincing the other person that it’s possible.
Consistency and routines help me to not lose sense of my individuality. I think it would be psychologically unhealthy to have every aspect of your life change all the time. I set up my office similarly no matter where I am, I listen to familiar music, and eat familiar foods when I can. Some people go overboard with this and create a bubble that pretty much exactly emulates their home environment, which is far too extreme. But I do this to a certain extent and the familiar environment to return to helps me venture out more in other parts of my life.
Realise that you can be with someone even if you physically can’t touch them. I call my parents once a week and talk to them for almost an hour each time on video Skype. As much as I’d love to hug everyone I talk to online, the fact that I can’t do that does not take away from the meaning of our interactions. For the older generation, perhaps chatting to someone online or even by video call means “nothing”, but to me it counts as a lot and is indeed almost as good as actually being there. Being open to maintaining friendships online means that you do have a stable group of friends and family around.

As you are getting older do you think about settling down, marrying etc.?

I’m 29. To me this is far from old. Even 39 or 49 wouldn’t count, and if you have enough spirit in you, 59 and 99 are not old either. I know people those ages who would put teenagers to shame in their sense of adventure and scope of life enjoyment. While some people may feel that the number of laps you have completed of the solar system has any real significance. I do not. As far as I’m concerned, age dictates nothing. It’s just a number.

When I’m 30, nothing will necessarily change. The only difference is that I am hoping for a big party since it’s a round number, and thus as good as any other excuse to hold a party!

Next, I don’t really understand how settling down in one place and marrying as somehow a necessary destiny for everyone on the planet. This “American dream” lifestyle of having a picket fence house and a dog named Skip and a nuclear family is not something that really interests me.

As well as this, marriage is more of a religious institution than anything else and I’m not religious. If I decide to spend the rest of my life with a girl, I’ll tell her that.

But maybe I’ll change my mind.

As much fun as it is, I don’t plan to have this nomadic lifestyle forever. Some day (in 2/5/10 years?) I’ll stop and have something close to traditional stability (and perhaps travel only for a month or two out of the year) and the chance to have my own family if I decide to. While I may not be able to do this now in my current travel mode, knowing that this is open to me whenever I choose is very comforting.

Finding love on the road and not feeling lonely are questions I get asked a lot and will come back to in much more detail later.

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Any other questions? Ask and read the comments below! You can also ask specific travel tips in the forum that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to answer but someone else in the community would.
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Frequently asked questions for a long term traveller is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

How to travel the world like Indiana Jones

Benny — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:13:26 +0000

While I mostly talk about language learning here on Fi3M, I know a lot of you follow the blog for the travel/culture aspect of it, since travel can indeed be a huge adventure for so many of us.

So today’s guest post is from Matt Kepnes, who runs Nomadic Matt’s travel site. I’ve met Matt many times, always in different places, and he would be much more of a travel blogger than I am (since I tend to only “travel” for a day or two every 2-3 months usually and stay put in one place, albeit different every time).

Matt has been on the road for five years, where he has been truly nomadic nearly the entire time, and still stays in hostels, finds ways to stretch his budget and has an interesting experience in each place.

In this post he discusses a great sense of adventure that a lot of us may have dreamed about when growing up; the Indiana Jones mentality and lifestyle. Having met Matt in person a lot, and seeing how much fun he is, I do think he’s the best guy to write about this! Take it away Matt!

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When I was younger, I wanted to be an archaeologist. After watching “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade,” I thought it would be such an amazing, manly job to have. I wanted to be able to live like Indy. I wanted to go discover humanity’s lost secrets in all corners of the world.

I never became an archaeologist but my desire to explore the world and learn its history has never dwindled, thanks in part to my memories of the Indiana Jones movies.

Indiana Jones showed how cool it was to travel and explore the world. He jetsetted around the globe, and he did it style.

After traveling for close to five years straight, I can tell you that, even without being an archaeologist, there are still ways to kick ass and travel the world like Indiana Jones:

Be Adventurous

Indiana Jones was an adventurous guy. He’d go trekking through jungles, traverse empty deserts, explore ruins, and crawl through underground cemeteries. It was all in a day’s work for him. He never chickened out on any activity. (Unless it had to do with snakes, but even then he eventually conquered his fear.)

If you want to be a successful traveler, you need to live for the adventure. It’s the adventures that we remember. It’s the times we push ourselves to the limit that we think back on years later. If you’re out exploring the big, bad world, you should be taking that jungle trip through the Amazon, jumping out of planes, and learning to scuba dive. When will you get another chance?

Indiana never took the easy road. Travel is about breaking out of your comfort zone. It’s about pushing yourself and finding out what you are made of. Real men don’t back down. Real men challenge themselves. So jump off that cliff. Eat that grasshopper. Arm wrestle that Ukrainian bouncer. Live it up. Be fearless.

I was recently on a trip to the Galapagos Islands, and everyone was diving off the boat one day. I hate heights as much as Indiana Jones hates snakes but I realized that I would probably never have the chance to do this again. I closed my eyes and jumped. I might never do it again but I don’t regret taking that leap.

Be Friendly

Indiana Jones was never rude to anyone. He treated people like people. He was polite, and he was cool. He mixed well with the locals and followed their customs. He rarely got angry (unless it was at Nazis). His easy charm is why everyone liked him and why all the women wanted him. So be polite. Be engaging. Have a good time, and invite others to join you. Indy had a magnetic personality, which made him cool. That’s why every 12-year-old kid growing up in the 1980s wanted to be him.

When I’m traveling, my best experiences with locals happen when I open myself up to them. When I say hello, thank you, or goodbye. When I accept their hospitality. When I make an effort to treat them like equals. And because of that I have been taken to people’s Easter celebrations in Sweden, festivals in Greece, and family dinner in Cambodia.

Indiana was never the rude tourist, and you shouldn’t be either.

Be Tough

Indy was tough. He could take punches, climb walls, jump off cliffs, and handle crazy Indians who wanted to (literally) rip out his heart. He was pretty bad-ass.

On the road, be tough. Of course, don’t be one of those fighting drunks that everyone hates. I don’t mean that kind of tough. Instead, focus on doing something that is exciting, thrilling, and physically challenging. Go cliff-diving or bungee jumping. Learn Muay Thai boxing or run a marathon in some distant country. Indy might have had a soft side with the ladies, but when push came to shove, he pushed himself to his physical limits.

Travel is about pushing yourself not only to your mental limits, but to your physical ones, too. Step up to the plate and simply say, “I may wake up tomorrow sore, but I’ll never know if I can do this if I don’t try.” I could barely move after I did Muay Thai in Ko Phi Phi, but, while I got my butt kicked, it is still one of my fondest travel memories. It was the first time I ever pushed myself physically, and it has given me the courage to do it over and over again.

Be Intelligent

Besides being totally bad-ass, Indiana Jones was also smart. He was no idiot. He knew Latin, history, science, and languages. No matter how awesome being tough is, being smart is just as cool. Know about the world. Read. Learn how to speak languages other than your own. Read the history of the places you’re visiting. Learn about their current events. Know where you are.

If it wasn’t for brains, Indy wouldn’t have solved the Grail puzzle or found the Lost Ark. Remember, there’s nothing cooler than a guy who knows what he is talking about. Would Indiana Jones be as great if he picked the wrong chalice or didn’t remember to close his eyes when they opened the ark? No, of course not. Being smart as a traveler not only makes you more prepared on the road, but it also helps you blend in and relate to the locals.

Don’t Let Age Stop You

Say what you want about his quest for aliens – old Indy kept on going despite his age. He kept up with his son. He fought those Russians. No matter how old you are, don’t let age stop you. The second you begin to think you are old, you’ve become old. On the road, I have met seniors, boomers, and families staying in hostels and backpacking throughout the world.

Travel is not for the young. It’s for the young at heart.

There’s nothing that says you can’t travel when you are older. It’s only the fear you have in your head that says that. Real men don’t quit when they are older. They just get more awesome. Look at George Clooney – he’s only become better with age. Like a fine wine.

All of these traits will help make you as cool of a traveler as Indiana Jones.

Because, let’s admit it: Indy was as a bad-ass guy who knew how to travel the world. No one could ever call his travel style boring. Heck, he even survived a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator! So why wouldn’t you want to follow in his footsteps with the right traits? These traits will not only help you on the road, but they can help you become a better man off the road, too.

Matthew Kepnes has been continuously traveling the world for five years now. He writes about conquering your travel fears, life on the road, and how to travel on a budget at his website, Nomadic Matt.
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How to travel the world like Indiana Jones is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

How to travel the world on the cheap

Benny — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:19:38 +0000

Welcome to all new readers from the Get Rich Slowly blog.

Today I’ve written a guest post there about How to learn a foreign language without spending a cent. All other readers should check it out for a list of my favourite free resources as well as a generally great website that J.D. Roth runs for saving money and spending it wisely.

That post is necessary to remind people not to throw money at the problem of finding good language learning resources. As I said in that post, travel is not necessary for reaching great levels in a foreign language. But ultimately you may want to travel to practise your target language, while you discover a new culture.

Now, a question I get asked frequently is how to travel without spending a fortune, especially considering how I’ve been doing it for 8 years straight. While it’s very hard to travel for free (but certainly not impossible; I’ve met many who do), if you follow these tips you will actually find that living a nomadic life is cheaper than the budget required by most people for a settled life.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, my experience tells me that the vast number of people travelling long term need way less money than their friends back home who complain that they “can’t afford” to do it. There are other reasons you may not wish or be able to travel (family, work responsibilities, health issues etc.), but I will not stand for it when people say they are too poor to travel, especially when they come from a developed country.

Graham Hughes 20 tips for how to travel the world on the cheap

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAbCgr6jJ_0

This video was made by Graham Hughes, who is on a very interesting journey to visit every country in the world without flying (and made it to 184 so far!) He knows his stuff, so this video is as good a reference as anything I could make myself! You’ll get 20 excellent tips with explanations in the video. In summary they are:

Avoid expensive countries, travel light, purchase a decent guidebook, bring a laptop, unlock your mobile phone, get some decent travel insurance, bring a debit card, look for mega cheap flights, be creative, blag a student card, overland it, sneak in, have a good story, eat street food, drink with the locals, avoid countries that demand visas, bargain and bargain hard, don’t get ill, no souvenirs, couchsurfing.

For travel insurance, I’ve linked to a form on my travel resources page that you can check your target country price for with a date range. For mega cheap flights, I’d recommend skyscanner, as I’ve gotten very cheap rates by searching through them in the past (and they’ve even interviewed me on their site!)

My own extra additions to travel cheap

Graham’s tips are excellent and things that many long term travellers eventually figure out. I would however add a few to them myself, as follows:

Use the local equivalent of Groupon

If you do need to spend money on something, or feel like treating yourself then find out what the local equivalent to groupon or Livingsocial is. These sites are growing quickly in many countries.

You can get promotional gym memberships for a week to help you stay in fit on the road, get cheap nights out in otherwise expensive restaurants, get tours and all sorts of other offers. Otherwise ask locals and inquire on Thorntree forum to see what kinds of discounts are going.

Some countries have their very own sites for these kinds of offers, so use forums or ask locals what sites they use (these sites are new and may not be common knowledge in some places yet). While I was in Turkey, for example, I subscribed to the daily email from şehir fırsatı and Yakala.

There’s a good reason this tip is not likely to be on most travel-tip sites: the offers are of course written in the local language. This brings me to the most important tip that this whole blog is based around:

Learn to speak & understand the local language

I’m sad when I don’t see this one listed by so many travel bloggers as such a huge money saver, but unfortunately many of them travel just with English and don’t realise how much they can save by putting in a little effort, getting over their fears and speaking the target language from day one.

There are so many reasons to travel without using English.

For example, thanks to haggling in the local language (Portuguese), I rented an entire penthouse apartment in Rio with a 270º panoramic view of the city [video here] and paid less than what I used to pay to live in a studio in Dublin as a student. It’s also way easier to charm your way to better prices as you won’t pay the “English tax” of restricting yourself to only being able to make deals with the upper class or tourist caterers that speak English (beyond signing what you need).

Get help from a local (or even pay for help)

Ask at the Couchsurfing forum for your target city for the best way to get good prices. When there, ask the person who works at the hostel/hotel/your landlord/your host for their best tips on getting a good experience without spending much or any money. Sometimes the best tips aren’t in guidebooks or Google-able, but are known only by people who live there.

If you’re really stuck, then why not just pay a local to solve your problems for you? It may work out way cheaper in the long run!

Travel slower

If it isn’t for a traditional vacation, why do people have to charge through countries in just a week (or less)? I have very little interest in quantity, and have the least number of countries covered out of any traveller I know who has been on the road for more than a year (I’ve been to about two dozen countries so far, compared to about 100 or more by other long term travellers).

Screw your bucket lists – take it easy and appreciate each country! When you do this you can live as a local in so many ways and save a LOT of money. I rent apartments or rooms all the time, and pay as little as locals with long-term rent in many cases if I stay around 2 or 3 months. I also find great cheap places to eat and other cheap activities in my own time and go through all other tips given here to get used to avoiding the expensive black-holes for money.

If you’re clever you can find a way to live there while earning money (see the link at the end of the article). It’s not as hard as you think if you can do your job on a computer or don’t mind teaching a little English.

When you do this you also start to appreciate local life on another level and see beyond the stereotypical superficial images of a country. It also helps to learn the local language if you are going to be there beyond a week or two.

Give up or drastically reduce smoking and drinking

The only thing I disagree with in Graham’s list is “drink with the locals”. I’d replace it with socialise with the locals. No excuses that you’re “too shy“.

I go out to bars and nightclubs as much as many people, but I save tonnes of cash by just buying one Orange Juice or a Coke or water. I am amazed to tell you that many long term travellers I’ve met have told me that alcohol represents over 50% of their budget. I don’t drink and I can tell you that life is just as much fun. And I’ve also needed tens of thousands of dollars less than a drinking traveller would over the last decade.

If you smoke, wake up to the bloody 21st century knowledge of tobacco effects and stop giving yourself and others potential lung cancer or other breathing issues. Giving up is hard, but you owe yourself and your bank balance to not have this totally unnecessary, disgusting and stupid drain on it.

Other tips

I’ve touched on this topic before when I suggested that you don’t have to be rich to travel the world, giving more hints about earning money on the road and tips like eating less meat and cooking more at home. (I’m vegetarian; this has contributed to me being able to afford to travel for so long).

If you have other tips, make sure to let us know in the comments below! Thanks for reading
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How to travel the world on the cheap is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Istanbul not Constantinople, Benny’s music video in Turkish

Benny — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:42:19 +0000

My time in Istanbul is officially over – for the next two weeks I’ll be with my family in Ireland before hitting the road again. (To find out where I’m going and clues of what the next language will be, see Facebook and Google+)

But to wrap up my time in Istanbul, I’d like to share this video I made!

I took the famous song, which was in my head all summer; Istanbul not Constantinople (originally sung by The Four Lads, but also known by the more modern They Might Be Giants take on it), translated it to Turkish and sang it myself! The lyrics are more or less the same, based on the latter version so no subtitles are required

Here it is!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrmEpDKpJnA

You’ve heard me sing in French, Spanish, German and Tagalog, and by now you’ll have figured out that not having the most beautiful singing voice in the world is definitely not going to stop me from doing it anyway In fact, since this song was harder to sing than normal, I think I did a pretty bad job at singing and you may want to press mute after a few seconds, or at least laugh at how badly I do it

Rest assured that I make up for it with decent video editing skills and funny and very Turkish scenes!

Two great friends in Istanbul, Timur & Burcu (dancing in a scene together near the end) joined me to film some experiences and places that makes Istanbul stand out for visitors. Once you ignore my clumsy Turkish and bad singing, it’s actually a pretty cool video.

I hope you enjoy it If you do, please share the video link! Click here to copy to your clipboard for pasting into Facebook (Facebook will open automatically and you just have to right-click and paste into your status update ), and go directly to Youtube to click the thumbs up or to leave a comment! I’d really appreciate it! Otherwise, comments welcome below as always!
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Istanbul not Constantinople, Benny’s music video in Turkish is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight

Benny — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Eight years.

That’s 416 weeks, or almost 3,000 days.

This is the amount of time that I have not had a fixed home; moving to a new country, culture and language every few months and taking absolutely everything I own with me. It has been a significant percentage of my life, and it’s still long from over.

I had actually done some travelling before – a couple of summers in the states, and an entire month already in Spain. But about this time back in 2003, on the week of my 21st birthday, I left Ireland for good. I had graduated university a few days before, and knew that I’d only be coming back “home” for visits (I’ve never once missed the family Christmas dinner). But it’s not really my home any more. Since then, “wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home”.

After devoting my life to them, university and schools had taught me nothing of any real importance. I had gone through as many books as I could and thought I knew it all, but the fact of the matter is that I have become the person I was meant to be in the last 4/5 of a decade, while on the road. And I certainly still have a lot left to learn.

[Edit: People keep asking me how I can afford a travel lifestyle for so long, or if I'm rich or if my parents paid for everything. I paid for the entire trip myself, starting with no money saved up; I can assure you my lifestyle is way cheaper than most settled people who prove observation #10 and need so much money to buy rubbish!

You don't need to be rich to travel the world. To find out more about me and my story, please read my site's About page to see a list of the many jobs I've had during my travels. For just the last one year I've been earning money by helping people to hack languages quicker. I've also followed this post up with some FAQs about long-term travel here, regarding finding work and the psychological aspect of it.]

Since yesterday was my 29th birthday and this week is my 8 year “travelversary”, I thought it fitting to share 29 of these revelations with you of things that I have learned on this journey. Many of them are about life in general, but these are actually my observations after meeting many people from all over the world:

1. Everyone everywhere basically wants the same thing

Vastly different as the world’s cultures are, if you speak to Italian millionaires, homeless Brazilians, Dutch fishermen and Filipino computer programmers, in their own languages, you start to see that we are all incredibly alike where it matters.

Everyone just wants validation, love, security, enjoyment and hopes for a better future. The way they verbalise this and work towards it is where things branch off, but we all have the same basic desires. You can relate to everyone in the world if you look past the superficial things that separate you.

2. Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea

Too many people presume that when they have that one thing they can work towards for years then “everything will be alright”.

This is delusional.

When you get it, there’ll be something else missing in your life. I fundamentally believe that long-term pure happiness from one particular situation or achievement is a pipe-dream, but we can learn to be content with what we have, live in the now, all while enjoying the progress and changes we are making.

If your whole life is working up towards one really big major goal that you hold on to for years, then you will have a major anticlimax after the dust settles. Work towards it, but stop deferring your happiness.

Get there slower and enjoy the ride. I like how it is portrayed in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

Enjoy the show, and don’t wait for the finale. A song I really like (in Spanish) reminds me that the present really is all we have.

3. “Someday my ship will come in” is bullshit. You will NEVER win the lottery. Be practical.

People seem to have a strange concept of how luck works and how the universe/some deity/karma/their lucky shoe or how “they deserve it” will mean that things will eventually fall into place for them. You are “due” to win the lottery or will get swept away by prince charming any day now. “You deserve it” (as if others don’t).

This is a misunderstanding of how the world actually works. Perhaps I’m wrong and praying or hoping that it will all work out, or generally being a nice person is what really “does the trick”, but why not actually get off your ass and do something tangible too while you’re at it.

I personally don’t believe in magic or fairies or astrology or sky wizards or large-scale invisible inexplicable forces at work on petty daily activities of humans. I’m sceptical about such things, and believe they are all impossible/ridiculous, and knowledge of this has enriched my life. As a practical person, I see the world as a very logical place with physical and social rules and understanding this has helped me live well in it.

The universe owes you nothing, you owe it to yourself to be the master of where your life ends up.

4. There’s no such thing as destiny. This is excellent news!

Destiny is used as a cop-out and standard excuse by most people for why they don’t do something with their lives. The thing is, it doesn’t exist.

Your limitations are not set by who you know, where you were born, what genes you have, how much money you have, how old you are right now, what you did before or other things that you can claim are your stamp of failure for life.

If you are determined enough there is a shitload of opportunities in life that are totally achievable with minimal cash, regardless of who you are.

5. Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story

As you can probably guess from #3, I have some beliefs about the world that don’t jive with a lot of people’s. However, a lot of people get their meaning in life from believing in things I don’t. If everyone thought like me, the world would be a very boring place.

So when I meet someone with a very different belief system to mine, it’s better to get along than to try to “convert” them. This is as true for how the world works as it is for language learning methods, fashion, movie tastes etc.

When someone is sure about something and has believed it for many many years, then you cannot convince them with a few cleverly picked words. Everyone is closed minded about something, including me. They have to discover it themselves over time or just continue believing what they do. Don’t take responsibility for convincing the world you are right. It’s important to acknowledge that maybe you are actually the wrong one.

The world is much more fun with people of varying interests and beliefs. Despite my scepticism, in my travels I have hung out with astrologists, palm readers, very religious folk, conservatives, and people who hate technology. And my life and experiences are enriched so much because of it.

Spending time exclusively with people who agree with you on everything would never challenge you and allow you to learn so much more.

6. Living a good life is the best way possible to convince people

Enough words and enough arguing. Just live by example and soon you’ll have people on your side when they see your results and how passionate you are. No need to “convince” them. Just show them that you are there, tell them how you got there, and they will start to realise that maybe you aren’t that crazy after all.

7. Nobody has it all figured out

Almost everyone has problems and puts on a brave face – don’t presume they have it easy. You see of each person what they let you see. You have no idea what they are going through or what they had to put up with to be in a situation that you can consider “easy”.

This is universal – millionaires, students, the cool kid, the party animal, the introvert and everyone in between has more to their story than the superficial restricted one you see. Never dismiss them as having it easy if you don’t know the entire story.

8. There’s no shame in saying “I don’t know”

There is a stigma in some cultures to admit ignorance about a particular topic. Don’t dance around the issue – just say I don’t know. Honesty is way smarter.

9. More money will NEVER solve your problems

As long as you are not living in the street or going hungry, then you do not “need” more money. When you spend enough time with people who are actually living on next to nothing, but having a full life, then you will truly understand this. Everything that is wonderful about life doesn’t cost a penny, and the rest is way cheaper than you think it is.

10. Possessions own you

Look at the real reason you want to buy more expensive crap and realise that it all comes down to validation from others in one way or another. You don’t really need any of it unless it’s directly related to essentials in how you work or survive.

The need to buy new crap dictates your life – it fixes you in one location with that house and furniture, and it governs how much money you need to earn. And it almost never actually enriches your life in any way. The less you own the better.

11. TV is the greatest black hole of time available to mankind

I wasted so much of my life before age 21 spending 3-4 hours a day watching TV. Following shows that I “had” to see, in order to “relax”. I regret almost every second of it. The whole world was passing me by outside.

TV was an important part of the 20st century, bringing communication and news to the masses, but now it’s wasteful. People get biased news through it, when much better alternatives are available, watch terrible TV shows through it that teach them nothing, and it sucks so many hours of their lives away that they seem to forget about when they delude themselves into thinking that they don’t have time to pursue real passions in life.

TVs encourage people to be antisocial. The only TVs you should be watching are someone else’s – go to your friend’s house to share a series you like if you must, or go to the bar with your mates to watch sports. Your life will not be enriched by sitting at home watching a screen with zero interactivity to it.

12. The Internet is the greatest tool ever available to us, but daily use must be capped

Unlike TVs, the Internet is interactive and allows you to take part and become virtually social. It connects communities all over the world and without it, the last 8 years simply would have been much more difficult for me for many reasons.

Having said that, it has the same potential as TV to become a black hole of time. Use it to enrich your life, but put a cap on how much you use it so you can get out and live that life. Replacing one screen with another (even when you use it to chat to people) is just escaping the real world, which is much more beautiful.

13. Get outside and do something with other people

My favourite website in the world is Couchsurfing.org, precisely because I spend so little time on it. It has simplified my travel life tremendously by allowing me to host people to maintain my languages, and to search it for interesting people to meet up with.

The world that is worth experiencing is not in books or on TV or computer screens. It’s with other human beings. Stop being shy and get out and meet them!

14. Speaking only English is incredibly limiting to non-tourist travellers

If you are visiting a country for a weekend, then you can check into your hotel and order food in an expensive restaurant and get a guided tour in English. You can even make local university educated friends, and successfully create a bubble to protect you from the local language for as long as you like, and delude yourself into thinking that this is the way things are.

But you will never truly experience the local culture if you limit yourself to being able to interact on a deep level just the well educated part of it. English-speaking travellers miss out on so much – not speaking English has defined most of my travels and the amazing experiences I have had would have been impossible if I didn’t try to learn the local languages.

ANYONE can learn a language. When I was 21 I thought I couldn’t do it, but one day I put all the bullshit excuses to one side and just spoke it. Speaking a language from day one is the ‘secret’ to being able to learn it quicker and at any age.

15. Modern foreign culture does not have to satisfy your stereotypes

Every country in the world is modernising but this does not mean that they are westernising or Americanising. What makes them unique does not have to satisfy your “quaint” tourist-brochure view of them. Leave ignorant stereotypes aside and have an open mind about how modern life is like in that culture.

Not all Irish people drink, not all Brazilians samba and play football, and Germans, Dutch, Filipinos and everyone else will surprise you if you leave your presumptions about them at the airport.

Respect the differences, try to adapt to them yourself and realise that to them you might seem backwards in many ways.

16. Take your time

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in countries that are more “easy going” it’s that they are way wiser than the rest of us in their pace of life. People and countries that do everything quicker also do it worse. Take it easy and go slowly.

Enjoy every bite of food, walk at a slow pace and take in your surroundings, let the other person finish their side of the conversation while you listen attentively, and stop in the middle of your day, close your eyes or look at nature and become aware of your breathing.

17. You can’t please everyone

“I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everyone” – Bill Cosby.

State your opinion and stick to your guns. If you are confident enough and share your idea with enough people, you will piss off someone no matter what you talk about. That’s their problem, not yours.

18. Trying to be cool or following trends is for mindless sheep

Peer pressure is for people who are afraid of their individuality. Stand up for yourself, and go against the flow if that’s what you feel is best. What’s cool now will be frozen over in a few years.

19. Make mistakes – and LOTS of them!

Mistakes are how we learn. Failures are the stepping stones to success.

20. Wear sunscreen

Seriously. Protect your skin. Follow that and all other advice in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfq_A8nXMsQ

21. Stop thinking so much and act

People think their way out of doing everything that’s worth doing in life. The reason I feel I’m getting so much done in the last years is precisely because of how much time I give to over-analysing whether I should do something important or not: None.

22. Dance and sing whenever possible

Dancing and singing are great releases and forms of expression. It’s hard not to feel good after a session of either!

23. Making new friends is easy and so is appreciating your current ones

My entire eight years travel has been alone. I arrive in a new nation without a single friend waiting for me in many cases. I have no connections, but I make them anyway. I find a party online and go straight to it and say hi to everyone. Soon, if I try enthusiastically enough, I’ll find people I can socialise with on a regular basis.

If you are friendly, genuine and charming, making friends with people from every culture and background is possible.

When people who are surrounded by family, networks, work and school colleagues, other friends, clubs and communities they are a part of… tell me that it’s hard to meet new people I feel like slapping them in the face to wake them up to the opportunities around them, which I haven’t had consistently for almost a decade. Look around you!

24. You don’t know what you’ve got ’till its gone

Don’t take anything for granted. I couldn’t afford to pay for accommodation one night and had to sleep outside on a rock because of it. Ever since then I appreciate having a bed, couch or hammock, no matter how small or where it may be, because I know what it’s like to not have one. One night was enough to burn it into me – I sigh a breath of relief every time I go to bed now.

I went partially deaf due to an ear infection for two weeks and appreciate my hearing and all the beautiful sounds around me all the more because I got it back. I also gained an appreciation for signed communication that I’d take advantage of several years later.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me, but I hug my family members and tell them I love them every chance I get, and clear any bad air with friends and don’t hold back on sharing my emotions with them. Life is too short – if I lost anything important to me then I want to make sure that I never wasted the time I did have with it or with him or her.

25. Swallow your pride and apologise

Never hold a grudge and never try to win every argument. Sometimes it’s best to let your pride slide for the sake of clearing the air with someone. Be the first to say you’re sorry. Never wait for the other person to make the first move.

26. Doing anything specifically to impress people is stupid

People will never give you the validation you seek if you try to be a dancing monkey for them. Saying how many languages you speak, how rich you are, who you know, where you studied or what you do for a living, or trying to show-off in any other way to get someone to like you, or working for these things just for the bragging rights will leave you really disappointed.

People are impressed by those who aren’t trying to impress them and are comfortable in themselves and social and interesting. Sometimes to be “interesting” all you have to do is be a good listener.

27. People are not alone in being alone

One of the most frequent questions I get asked as a long-term solo traveller is if I feel lonely. The short answer is no. The long answer would require an entire post in itself.

But the fact of the matter is that loneliness is much more common around the world than I previously thought it was. I was actually much more lonely in my university (fixed) life than I am now. And I meet many people who have vast networks of social groups who feel desperately lonely because they feel nobody gets them.

Then others who simply changed their lifestyle in some way (not necessarily by travel, but perhaps marriage or starting a demanding job) and have lost contact with all their childhood friends because of it, also feel lonely.

I’ve talked to many people who are convinced they are the only ones who feel this way. Each time I hear a similar story I can hear the Police in my head “seems I’m not alone in being alone…” Believe it or not I find this very comforting when I am genuinely separated by thousands of kilometres from anyone who even knows what my name is. Even though nobody is in exactly the same situation, the amount of people in the world I’ve met tells me that I’m very likely not the only one in such a situation, even at that very second.

No matter how lonely you might feel, there is always someone who can relate to you. Perhaps you can’t talk to them right now, but they are out there.

28. Love isn’t “all” you need, but if you don’t have it in some form, your life will be very empty

We don’t need love to survive, but without it there will be a huge hole inside you. Make sure that every day you have someone (family, friends, lover) to remind you that you are special. If you postpone this part of your life until later, after you get or do that thing you want to do, you will continue in that lonely path indefinitely.

29. The most important lessons in life can never be expressed in black and white, but must be experienced

I thought I knew it all back in university – and that everything of importance can be found in books. But the truth is that the most important things in life are very hard to put in black and white, including what I’ve said in this post.

When most of the world’s information is at our fingertips, a mouseclick away, it makes it feel like we don’t need to experience any more. Movies, books, or “living vicariously through someone else” means we can apparently get the general gist of anything.

This is false. Experience is the greatest teacher of all. Stop reading about or watching the world passively and start living it.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this list. Since my birthday was yesterday I want you to remember that in about 5 weeks or so I’ll be making my delayed birthday request. It will cost you nothing but 2 minutes of your time. Please don’t forget it. Subsribe by RSS, enter your email in the top-right of the site, follow me on twitter and like this site’s page on Facebook (in the right sidebar) to find out what that is when the time comes!

Please let me know what you think about this list in the comments below!

[Edit: People keep asking me how I afford a travel lifestyle for so long. I can assure you my lifestyle is way cheaper than most settled people who prove rule #10 and need so much money to buy rubbish!

You don't need to be rich to travel the world. To find out more about me and my story, please read my site's About page and specific details of how aspects of my lifestyle work are covered in Language Learning, Travel and Business and Problogging resources.]

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29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

How a Personal Assistant can help budget travellers

Benny — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:22:44 +0000

People are always curious about how I can set myself up so quickly in a foreign country and I’ve shared my typical strategies for finding accommodation quickly before. That’s what I typically do and it’s been very effective.

But this time I tried something very different!

Because I’d have a 10 hour jet lag (coming from Vancouver) and would have a rough flight as a consequence of buying such a cheap ticket, I knew I’d arrive very tired. What I didn’t realise was that my final flight would be delayed SEVEN times and I’d end up spending 28 hours in Düsseldorf airport!

(Many thanks to SunExpress for being the worst airline in my entire last decade of travelling and treating their passengers so terribly, most of whom were Turkish families with dehydrated babies)

This meant that I arrived a day late and 3 full days of sleep deprivation meant that my usual strategies to get over jetlag quickly didn’t work.

I’ve actually had a rough first week of exhaustion and oversleeping, so I’ve only started my language mission in the last two days. (First week update of mission will have to come next week, sorry!)

If I had to do my usual intensive search for an apartment on my first day(s), while figuring out the bureaucracy behind setting up a SIM card in Turkey, and doing it all in a country that doesn’t speak much English (I am here learning its language after all!) I would have had a terrible first few days on top of my exhaustion, likely spending a lot on hostels or sleeping on someone’s couch in the process, which would not have been easy when I needed to catch up on lots of sleep.

A hired helping hand

Instead of this, I arrived and went straight to my own bed in my own apartment, and had the vast majority of everything else arranged for me. And no, I didn’t go through an agency!

Agencies are all over the place; they are a barrier to protect you from the local langauge and will figure it all out for you with a pre-arranged deal they have with local businesses. But they are also terribly expensive, may be working on commission (so are motivated to give you something more expensive) and tend to be too up-market for my needs. Those I know of give you anything but an authentic experience.

The ideal is to have a good friend to simply do all the work for you, but that’s asking a lot of any friend and I didn’t know anyone in Istanbul. So I hired a task specific temporary Personal Assistant!

Now I know what you’re thinking: assistants are for people in suits with too much money, but I actually spent a total of about US$50 to get all my bare essentials arranged for me! He was happy with the payment and so was I. That’s what I’d easily spend in hostels and needing to eat out all the time in a day or two. Or much more for hotels. And frankly, the convenience of going straight to my own bed from the airport in the perfect inexpensive ideally located apartment was in itself well worth the money!

How did I do it?

I went to odesk and elance [affiliate links] and wrote an advertisement to get someone who lives in Istanbul to do the work for me. After an interview process with several people, I hired a local who definitely looked like he would be helpful. On these systems you can hire someone who has already worked before for other people and has references so you know you can trust them.

He called up several advertisements that he saw (entirely in Turkish of course) and haggled the prices for me. He visited the most interesting ones personally and sent me all the details, and made sure they fit all the criteria I set (central, safe area, furnished, with Internet, within my budget etc.). Since he was searching as a local “for a friend” he didn’t have to deal with the price hikes I would have had as an obvious foreigner with no Turkish.

My ideal home

When I arrived I went straight “home”, paid my rent and got some well needed sleep.

My rent is a fantastic price and everyone I’ve told how much I pay are always surprised considering I live right by the Galata tower and a short walk to nearly all the nightlife of the city, and am only here for just over seven weeks. The apartment itself is modern, spacious, with air conditioning for hot Turkish afternoons and has all features I need and some I don’t (like widescreen satellite TV).

The only catch is there is no view because it’s tucked inside a small street. This also means no light gets into the apartment, and this has not been helping me adjust to local time! I usually wake up with sunlight, not alarm clocks: something I’ll miss for the next weeks, but worth the sacrifice for all the other benefits.

He was initially going to meet me as soon as I arrived from where the airport shuttle drops me and even bring me there himself! But all my delays meant I arrived too late to meet him, so I got a taxi and met with the owner directly instead.

The personal VA

While travelling, I was constantly communicating with “my assistant” to finalise details with him and ask him for extra tips entirely on my 3G Kindle, which has come in handy many times before while I’m on the road. He met up with me the next day and he gave me a bureaucracy-handled SIM card, with 3G Internet enabled, a public transport card, a nice chat, and a warm welcome! We did it in a place that had my first taste of very strong Turkish coffee, which certainly woke me up!

While here, I’ll continue to send him small tasks over the next weeks that may simplify my time in Istanbul. For him it’s welcome extra work (he already works full time) and he gets paid fairly of course, and for me it simplifies my life! This week for example I’ve asked him to call up some gyms and dance schools for me to find out what their prices are, since I can’t make phonecalls in Turkish yet.

I had read about “Virtual Assistants” in books like Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour work week that virtualise everything for you. I have gotten paid help online before to help me tweak some things on this website, but there is isn’t a lot that’s “virtual” about what I’m doing in Istanbul!

It worked out great, so I do believe I’ll be trying this in future destinations too

Think you would ever give it a try, or prefer to do all the dirty work yourself? Let us know in the comments!
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How a Personal Assistant can help budget travellers is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

[video] Interviews with two au-pairs in Spanish along Amsterdam canals: Learn a language abroad for free!

Benny — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:35:29 +0000

Today I want to share two great video interviews in Spanish (subtitled) with you about an excellent means of learning a language for young ladies: working as an au pair.

While living in Amsterdam, I actually met quite a lot of au-pairs when I wasn’t hanging out with the Dutch. It turns out that city has a history of being more open to it, and since the Dutch generally speak English very well, quite a lot of those I met were actually in the Netherlands to dramatically improve their English, or even other languages.

I decided to interview two of these girls (aged 20 and 21) both in their native Spanish, to share their stories with you all!

Elizabeth from Gran Canaria (Canary Islands)

The first of these interviews was with Elizabeth from Gran Canaria.

I had lived in the Canary Islands myself, and these days it’s the accent in Spanish I tend to aim for when I speak it, as it is a nice balance between Peninsular and Latin American. (You’ll hear that it definitely sounds like European Spanish compared to the second interview, but there are no “th” sounds for ‘c’s and they use ustedes instead of vosotros among other things).

Frustrated with the lack of opportunities in Spain, she came to Amsterdam to try to intensively improve her English as an au-pair as a means to transition into other work once she has improved her English enough.

She tells us that the family actually pay for everything for her (flight, food, clothes etc.)! She also gives some useful encouragement for other young girls who may have the opportunity to travel, and confirms that she is applying the communicative approach to learning her language and speaking and using it despite initial lack of vocabulary.

I met her just after she had arrived, and I noticed that her English had improved dramatically in just five weeks!

To make the video even more interesting, I recorded it from a pedal boat while going through Amsterdam’s canals! (I found an elastic tripod that I could wrap through a hole to keep my new interview camera fixed) The first few minutes have some construction work and noisy boats around us and then it gets much nicer!

I was quite distracted in trying to avoid ducks and tourists in other boats, so I hope my questions were OK! Great as the idea was, I think in future I won’t be controlling some sort of vehicle while I do one of these interviews!

Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4WSvd5Ftws

Melisa from Colombia

Melisa is from Medellín, where I lived last year. She was actually there at the same time as me, but we only met in Europe for the first time.

She also has some interesting things to say about how easy and safe it was to travel as a young girl. Her au pair family actually paid for half of her flight from Colombia and helped her a lot with visa applications.

She also mentions that while here she has been actually learning Italian by doing a tandem exchange! Here is her video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6HtsLacuAo

You can see that I tried to adjust my Spanish a little to hers, and used “vos” and the corresponding conjugations when I could remember it, since this is how she herself speaks.

More au pair info

These girls show that it’s certainly possible to live abroad, even if you have never travelled before in your life, are young, can’t afford to pay for flights, accommodation, etc. and don’t speak the language of the country (precisely the situation both of them were in on arrival).

You can also see that both of them are strong independent women who are really enjoying their first stay abroad – nothing bad is happening to them.

This article about au pairing on the Matador network has some more practical information for those interested.

If you have had a similar experience in the past, or have any advice for other ladies considering au pair work, or thoughts on these particular interviews, let us know in the comments!
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Interviews with two au-pairs in Spanish along Amsterdam canals: Learn a language abroad for free! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Differences between French in Quebec and France: accent, attitude & curse words [vidéo en français]

Benny — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:41:28 +0000

Two years after my experience in Paris, I decided to get back into French and move to Montréal (in 2007). It was a drastically different experience to my time in Paris! Everyone was so incredibly nice to me, people were much less formal and more open to making friends, and they especially had more patience to help me with my French.

Montréal and Quebec in general are among the most favourite places I’ve lived in, in the last decade of travelling. I still think very fondly back to my time there with my amazing and hilarious flatmates (Je m’ennuie de vous, Marie-Ève et Marlène!!), the parties, the Jazz fest, Juste pour rire and the amazing city and its open mind and warmth.

I especially liked Saint Jean (which I went to Quebec city for) – an incredible celebration which is comparible to other world festivals, but with the bonus of everyone coming up to you and wishing you Bonne Saint-Jean! Even the Carnival in Brazil didn’t have that level of interaction!

The Quebec spirit is one I definitely agree with and I highly recommend people go there (especially Americans due to proximity and likely easier bureaucratic visa etc. process) if they’d like to learn French.

Interview en français avec ma Couchsurfeuse Geneviève

The reason I’m bringing this up now, even though I’m in Amsterdam, is because I’ve been hosting a Québécoise for the last couple of days via Couchsurfing. As I’ve described in detail before, I use Couchsurfing as a means to maintain and practice all my languages on a regular basis, no matter where I am.

Since it’s been four years since I’ve lived in a French speaking country, I should technically have totally forgotten my French, but luckily I have been maintaining it thanks to hosting francophones.

Geneviève agreed to let me test out my new camera (which I’ll be using to interview those I host and come across in my travels in various languages in future) and ask her to share some thoughts on Quebec and Quebec French, and even share some frustration we both had Parisians (which luckily hasn’t been my experience elsewhere in France).

[Correction: She said that outside of Quebec they only speak English, which is of course forgetting about New Brunswick and many strong francophone communities throughout Canada.]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw5Re7k1KBA

Hopefully you liked the questions I asked her! The 13 minute video goes as follows:

Intro 0:00 – 0:36
[0:37] What’s different between Quebecers and the French?
[2:21] Some unfairness about preference for English in Montreal and the need to preserve French
[3:27] How foreigners are very much welcomed in French-speaking Quebec
[4:00] The history of where Quebec curse words come from and some examples
[5:30] Things to do to be more Quebecois
[6:27] Difference in use of “les anglais”
[6:53] Differences in how “a” is pronounced in some words
[7:41] Spending time with Quebecers to get used to the accent
[8:11] General vocabulary that is different in Quebec French
[10:55] Geneviève’s travels and thoughts on travelling to keep an open mind
[12:41] Wrapping up and me saying “I miss Quebec” in Quebec French

Hopefully my rusty (but still fluent) French doesn’t slow the interview down too much As you can imagine, my preference will be to share interesting videos like this rather than using my languages as a dancing monkey for no good reason. This is what languages are all about for me; interesting conversations with people. Expect more of these to feature on the blog

Any thoughts on how different Quebec French sounds? Have any of you been to la belle province? Let me know in the comments below!
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Differences between French in Quebec and France: accent, attitude & curse words [vidéo en français] is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Speed dating in Dutch: 25 completely different conversations with natives, 5 weeks into learning the language

Benny — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:43:30 +0000

I’m exactly five weeks into my mission to speak Dutch. While there are major advantages of my German and my English giving me a head start thanks to many linguistic similarities, I have had a major set-back in this mission that has been slowing me down tremendously; simply finding opportunities to converse!

Dutch culture is different to others I am used to; everyone has been very nice and polite to me, and nobody speaks English to me, but after a brief first conversation they tend to disappear, and there is little hope of seeing them again due to their always packed schedules. They are a bit too organised.

Luckily I am finally getting through to some people and starting to socialise properly, hanging out for hours or even almost an entire day, speaking just in Dutch. But for the most part, when I meet people I tend to have a similar first introduction conversation over and over again. This is a terrible way to make progress to be able to discuss many different topics required to be fluent in a language.

While I continue to meet people that I can converse more deeply with, I decided to tackle the problem in a unique different way; I need my brief first conversations (which are easy to find) to be unique so I’m discussing something different and improving my language skills in different ways. So I had a crazy idea:

Speed dating as a tool for language learning!

Speed dating is a relatively new concept, apparently started by Jewish communities in the late 90s to help shy people pair-off. I had only ever seen it on some American TV shows, and not really thought much about it.

I don’t generally have a problem getting dates as I travel; I don’t need any chat-up lines or clever tricks. My secret is that I simply don’t think about it so much. I see someone I like, I go up and talk to her and if we hit it off, I invite her out. No overanalysing about what if she’ll say no or trying to sound clever or impressive. I simply invite people I like to meet again. Not that complicated. I like inviting girls out on dates as it’s a fun way to get to know someone more intimately, and it’s a great way to practice a language and window into the local culture. (And yes, because I just happen to like spending time with a fun pretty girl because I’m a single guy, so sue me).

Only, for the first time in a while (apart from Paris) it isn’t working because of the different dynamic in inviting people out here. You generally don’t meet someone up this week for coffee or lunch; you have to propose a time long in advance and understand the Dutch need to be organised; something which contrasts with my preference for spontaneity. Also, Dutch people have their set network of friends and it’s turning out to be incredibly hard to break into that.

If the majority of my conversations with the Dutch are going to be brief, then I decided to think of a better way to take advantage of these conversations. Speed dating just hit me as the obvious way to test it out, and I found a place that organises it and had a session for 20-35 year olds last night!

It turns out the website I got it through only accept Dutch bank payments (€32), so I knew it was unlikely I’d find other foreigners there, confirming how useful it would be to get to know locals. I got my flatmate to pay for me, and signed up for what I considered simply an excellent and unique opportunity to practice Dutch with 25 people!

To make it more interesting though, I gave myself the challenge that each of my mini dates (lasting only 3-5 minutes) must involve talking about something completely different. (And of course they must be in Dutch). I can’t just rattle off the same introduction and ask the same questions or I won’t learn anything.

I actually had little interest in finding the girl of my dreams (I’m leaving in 3 weeks!) – the idea of experiencing this speed-dating phenomenon is something I had to try once. I don’t have a bucket list (and don’t like the idea of listing things months or years in advance to tick off in my life), but speed dating was certainly on my spontaneous fuck-it (why not) list! Doing it in a language I’m not yet fully comfortable in just made it all the more interesting

25 ways to not talk about the weather

I find it incredible when people tell me that they have “nothing to talk about” when they find an opportunity to practice a language, and suggest that all you can do is discuss the weather. So, I’ll actually tell you exactly what I remember talking about last night.

I was going to save this story for my weekly mission update following a language learning tip in the Language Hacking League email list (which you can subscribe to on the right of the site or at the end of this post), but the evening was so much fun that it deserves a full blog post! On Thursday I’ll get emailed if any of these girls actually decided that I was a good “match”, and the answer to that (whether it’s several or zero) will be given in next Monday’s email! [Edit: Actually they already emailed me, quicker than expected! How many and if we met up described in Monday's newsletter ]

However, since my goal was simply to chat rather than convincing them that I’m soulmate-worthy material, and told most of them I was leaving soon, I’m not sure if they would care to see me again. But you never know, maybe Irish charm does work on Dutch girls!

So I arrived, asked the hotel receptionist where the speed-dating was going down and found the hostess explaining how it works. She checked my name against the bookings and gave me my booklet of girls’ names. As you can imagine, she was certainly not speaking slowly for the benefit of foreigners! But I managed to understand most of it. She pointed out the tables, shown in the photo above, and said that the girls will stay in the same place they are assigned and each time the bell rings, the guys will move up a table. You can tick off “Ja” or “Nee” for if you’d like to see that person again.

People were still arriving so she said to wait in the bar and get a complimentary drink. I got myself an O.J. and stood there wondering what-the-hell I was I doing, when suddenly two of the girls saw me by myself and invited me to sit with them! I actually had a good 20 minute conversation with them before the event even started! I told them why I was in Amsterdam, mentioned my travels, and the blog, got to know them too a bit and then the hostess called us all in.

Only… there was a problem! Even though the speed-dating hadn’t really begun yet, I had talked about my blog and travels, so I wasn’t allowed to discuss that any more for the rest of the night! The only thing I could repeat were basic things like my name, the fact that I’ve been in Amsterdam a month, and a casual mention that I’m a writer, without necessarily expanding on it. For more interesting conversations I needed to find common ground, or talk more about her obviously.

I sat down to my assigned table, said that my name was Benny and she said she couldn’t see me on her sheet. “Oh, um… actually my name is Brendan sorry!” (I put my actual name in the application rather than the nickname I always go by, in case the speed-date organisers asked to see my ID). Being confused about my own name was hardly the best start I’d make this mistake several times in a row actually!

In later mini-dates, I just started mid-conversation and skipped the boring “Hello, my name is Brendan” intro. They’d ask my name at the end so that they knew precisely where to mark that nee (or perhaps a ja or two somewhere, I’ll find out soon enough!)

It seems like I blew the first date; we talked about how she has to get the train back to Rotterdam so she probably won’t be staying too late. I don’t think many sparks were flying in that conversation!

Next!

Onward, and in the second date I started with a merry “So… [read her name tag] – Why did you decide to go on a speed-date today then?”

Such strange first openers perhaps weren’t helping my Ja-quota, but I had nothing to lose! She told me about how hard it is meeting a man in Amsterdam, and I said that it’s hard meeting people in general in this country, told her about my own difficulties in doing so and said I was seriously thinking of befriending all the canal ducks in the city instead. She got a great laugh out of that and asked me the same question.

“Why, I signed up to this speed-dating for some Dutch practice of course! €32 for 25 intensive chats in the language with a drink included! That’s much cheaper than the going rate for private conversation lessons!” Another laugh – things were going much better! She told me that it’s probably the cleverest idea she’s ever heard for practising a language. Ironically, by saying that I’m not here to meet a girl, I think that she may have actually given me a ja!

The next girl told me how she has always dreamed of going to Ireland so I gave her some travel tips and advised her to go to Galway rather than Dublin, and the next girl was shocked to see that I was speaking Dutch at my current level after just a month. Most of them were very impressed by this, but I tried to change the subject quickly to get the best out of the time I had. She was very curious though, so I said that I got to this stage by speaking as much as I could, every day if possible, from the very first day. I should actually be speaking better than this, but not meeting many people so frequently is slowing me down.

Her jaw had still dropped, so I added that German and English are helping me, and that I was actually doing many things she wasn’t taking into account. I told her to observe my body language and how comfortably I’m speaking, leaning back, nodding as she speaks to confirm I understand, cushioning my speech with normally irrelevant filler words (you know, like etc. in English and eens, maar, even in Dutch), and how this actually adds to an “illusion” of me speaking better than I actually am. I’m not hesitating; when I don’t know a word I’ll use a workaround quickly, whereas most people at my current level will second-guess themselves and give out the impression that they know way less than they really do.

The bell rang and I had a feeling she’d probably come ask me more questions during the break.

The last girl before the pause was very pretty; probably the youngest one there (21 or so). Unfortunately I don’t remember what we talked about I put her down as a ja, but I suspect I’m a nee! haha

The break is always the most interesting part

Something I find is that the best parts of many organised social events tend to be in the breaks between what the event is actually about. In recent conferences I’ve been to, I’ve found that the actual talks didn’t teach me much that I didn’t know already, but I made some amazing connections in the hallways on the way to some talk.

It was the same with speed-dating. The conversations being squeezed into just a few minutes feel a bit forced; I tried my best to start random and interesting discussions, but in the bar in the two breaks and at the end we were all just chatting normally and this was much more enjoyable. Simply bringing together lots of single people with some interesting twist to it seems to be the smartest part of the whole thing.

I got to know a lot of people, including the other guys. One of the girls I had talked to announced to the small group I was in that my Dutch was at this level after a month (something I hadn’t brought up) and this was sort of a mini-introduction to people I’d end up sitting with shortly after. Apparently this little linguistic parlour trick of mine had been the most interesting thing happening so far in the evening.

I tried to shrug it off as just a natural consequence of speaking somewhat intensively over a month and told them that I’ve met many people who have done similar things. They all agreed, but added that it was more impressive that I was an English speaker doing this. I had to give in and say that yes, generally, English speakers are the laziest language learners in the world, but that we have other redeeming qualities. Although at the time I couldn’t think of any to list…

More dates

Back in, and I continued switching between a few different topics. Some of the times I stuck to discussing the other person’s job, and others I talked about something completely random to really test myself (and likely, their patience). To help break the ice I related something I share about their jobs or interests. One girl was a primary school teacher, so I shared my woes of teaching rowdy 6 year old Spaniards English.

The next one did all the talking. For all she knew I was Dutch myself…

Another one worked in marketing, so I asked her about what kind of psychology is involved in that and shared a story I read once about changing the phrasing in a hotel’s request to reuse your towel by emphasising how others do it too. Her face lit up as I was saying this; it seems like nobody else had anything clever to add about marketing.

Another girl told me that she would love to actually speak English with me, but her level is terrible. I’ve been meeting quite a few Dutch people who confirm that this myth that they all speak perfect English isn’t true. I could have spoken English to her in our mini-date, but instead of losing my momentum I decided to “teach her to fish, rather than give her a fish” so to speak. I gave her a bunch of tips for how she could speak English pretty much all the time in Amsterdam, such as by hosting Couchsurfers and attending those meet-ups.

She told me that my level in Dutch was incredible for the time I’ve spend speaking it. The bell rang before I could retort to assure her there is nothing magical about what I’m doing, and it’s just about applying the right techniques.

Cupid’s arrow

After the last pause and more chatting to people, I could already see some couples starting to pair off, going back to the tables to continue some intimate conversation. This speed-dating thing actually seemed to be working!

Not so well for me though! My first date in the last session was a girl who was totally uninterested in talking to me. I think she thought I was lying when I said I had been learning Dutch for just a month. The conversation was so dry that I actually had to resort to asking “So… any travel plans this summer?” out of the blue. As soon as I stood up, I could see her tick nee for me immediately. (Usually they’d wait until you were gone). Yikes!

I actually had to wait over a minute to sit down at the next table; the guy in front of me was still locked in some incredibly deep conversation with my next date. After several “ahem” fake coughs, the hostess actually had to come to break them up! When I sat down I said “Well, I know two people who are definitely giving one another a yes today!” She found it funny – so I went on to point out who I figure cupid’s arrow has struck tonight. Since my time ran out much quicker than normal, I didn’t quite get to shine myself – but there probably wasn’t much point. Destiny had spoken as far as I could tell!

As I was moving to the next table I noticed a girl I had already sat with make “ugh, no way!!” faces about her previous date to a friend that he was about to sit with. I told her that I saw that, but leaned in and added that I had talked to him at the bar and agree with her.

Back to my last table, and it was with one of the girls who had paired off already. I could tell that her mind was elsewhere, so I asked her how she found the website for this speed dating thing. It was hard to engage with her in conversation – as soon as the bell rang, I almost saw a Warner Brother’s style cloud left from her dashing off so quickly.

While there were some bumps, I actually managed to engage in good and unique conversations with almost all of the women! My level of Dutch was complimented constantly and not even mentioned in many conversations as important. I don’t remember having any difficulty understanding anything that was said to me or asking them to repeat it.

I looked over my paper, thought about who I enjoyed talking to and marked maybe a third as ja and handed in my sheet. Back in the bar I was talking again to several people; strangely enough most of the guys had vanished by now. I casually asked one of the girls how many jas she had put down. I knew I wasn’t going to be one of them, so it was purely statistical curiosity.

She kind of under her breath told me: ONE. It turns out most girls here put one or two down, while I marked everyone who I simply didn’t find boring as someone I’d be happy to meet again. Whether I do meet them again or not will be seen on Thursday (as I said, I’ll share what happens with email subscribers after the weekend) [Edit: actually I know already, sooner than expected], but I’m not too concerned to be honest. I got precisely what I wanted out of the night! Anything else is just a bonus.

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Obviously, speed dating is hardly a good universal solution for language practice, but the point is that this is just one of many random things I try and apply to make sure I get practice. It’s important to be open to new experiences; I was sceptical about speed dating, but it turns out most people there were actually attractive, level headed and very interesting. Then there are crazies like me of course

Hopefully this rather detailed account of a rather strange Monday night out shows you that there are many ways you can converse with people. Sometimes they will be up for it, sometimes they won’t. Just go on to the next person and strike up an interesting conversation. I have yet to talk about the weather or other similar “conversation crutches” in any of my languages, even in the initial stages.

Think you’d ever go on a speed date (if you are/were single) in the country before you were fluent in the language? If you enjoyed this post, let me know in the comments below!
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Speed dating in Dutch: 25 completely different conversations with natives, 5 weeks into learning the language is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Why moving to a country may not lead to learning the language & what learners & expats CAN do

Benny — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:50:39 +0000

A lot of people are a bit fuzzy about this so I want to make it absolutely clear: If you move to a country for a few months (or even years) it’s very possible you will NOT learn the language.

Out of all the advice I give on this blog, based on my lifestyle you would think that “move the country that speaks it” is on my top to-do list for aspiring language learners? Absolutely not!

Being in a country is an amazing cultural and eye-opening experience, but believing that simply being there will lead to you learning the language shows little understanding of what is involved.

You see, as I travel to new places, as well as mostly locals, I meet quite a lot of expats and others who are staying for a few months like me and the sad truth is that the vast majority of them learn next to nothing in the local language. Consequently in many countries this means they make almost no local friends.

If you think that by throwing money at the problem and buying that plane ticket, you’ve done the hardest work, you’re delusional!

In the cities I’ve been living in over the last years; Amsterdam, Rio, Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Rome, Paris, Manila, Bangkok, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Prague etc. what I consistently see is that many expats (especially English speakers, but other groups such as Spaniards can be just as bad) won’t learn anything beyond a few phrases.

I’m sad to say that this has been the majority of foreigners I have met who live in the countries (i.e. are renting somewhere for at least a few months, not there as tourists for a weekend). I’ve even met people living in these places for over a decade who never get beyond this stage!

Luckily there are exceptions, and today I want to discuss what I feel leads to many people not learning a language despite living in the country. I also want to reiterate that you don’t need to travel in the first place, but if you are already in the country, perhaps seeing these reasons will help you find ways around them.

Why is this?

While it’s too simple to say that they are lazy, I think this does contribute quite a lot to it.

The number one reason is excuses. They “don’t have the language gene“, they aren’t smart enough, they have a bad memory, they’re too old, or invent other bogus excuses like not having time. They never really try. They think too much about why they’ll fail and never get out of this terrible pessimistic mindset. Also, no matter where I go in the world it’s funny that there happens to always be the country with the “most difficult language” in the world.
In many countries they delude themselves into thinking that “everyone speaks English”, even in countries where almost nobody outside of the tourist industry can speak more than rudimentary English. (With people’s basic English skills of a few phrases to help them sell things to rich foreigners being blown out of proportion).
The main problem is that they have carefully moulded themselves into an English-speaking bubble so they are caught in a vicious circle that constantly provides them proof of why English is all you need. It’s nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. If all your friends are other foreigners, or locals that work in tourism, or who are university educated and perhaps using “socialising” with you for free English practice, and you eat in the same places etc. this says nothing about the vast amount of the country you’re ignoring. These people seem to be blissfully unaware of the possibilities and advantages of a life without English.

Even in northern European countries (like the Netherlands) where English is indeed widespread (although I can confirm that I have met Dutch people who are uncomfortable speaking English and relieved that I speak Dutch to them), expats use the excuse that nobody will speak the language with me! Well, I have yet to find a single Dutch person that has spoken English to me when it’s clear I want to speak their language. It’s amazing, but simply trying to roll your Rs could hide the fact that you’re an English speaker; they are so used to lazy English speakers, that out of force-of-habit they’ll switch when they hear an English accent. Apart from that that there are many ways to convince them to help you.
The “I’ll do it later” issue. You arrive and you have to sort out accommodation, make friends, get used to the city etc. You’ll start next week! But next week you have to get started working or studying in university – this weekend then! And so on. It gets postponed so far that eventually you know it’s never going to happen. This is especially true as you tend towards making other foreign friends, which is “easier” without working that extra bit hard to make local ones instead. This is why speak from day one is not just a good strategy, but a good routine to get yourself into immediately.

Apart from issues that are indeed the learner’s fault, there are problems they just don’t think about when moving abroad that can be extremely distracting and discouraging:

Sometimes making friends is really hard; a lot harder than they had considered. You are in an entirely different culture, with different mentalities and people treat one another differently. Separating a culture and a language is a huge mistake. This is one of the major reasons that people embrace an expat community instead of local friends; they simply relate to those other foreigners more. It’s important to try to adapt yourself and keep an open mind as to why those locals are acting so differently. Stop judging them by your standards!

Another big issue is putting “moving to the country” as the do-all-end-all of language learning. Because of this they would have done no preparation , or bad preperation of only studying before coming. Too many people tell me that they are moving somewhere in 6 months, and say that they’ll study a little until then, as if when they arrive a switch will magically go off to turn them into speakers.

While there are definitely ways to squeeze the little you know to allow you to converse on arrival, if you don’t start practising NOW (see below) you’ve shot yourself in the foot in terms of maintaining terribly slow progress right from the start. The “start” isn’t when your plane lands, it’s when you decide to learn the language!!

(Note: I start learning on arrival since I decide shortly before moving somewhere that I’ll learn its language, but that’s because I get a buzz out of an adventurous and certainly challenging travel lifestyle. As I keep saying, my goal is not language learning, but authentic travelling based around meeting as many locals as possible. Waiting until your plane lands before you start speaking is definitely not something I’d recommend as part of a good overall learning strategy).

Start learning and speaking now and you’ll hit the ground running on arrival.

Even more reasons;

The learner just isn’t passionate enough about learning the language. They thought it would be a “nice idea”, but that was about it. They actually have little interest in speaking the language with people; it’s important to be passionate about using a language, rather than just passionate about languages in general or academically, or just interested in travelling (i.e. physically being in another country, regardless of genuine interest in its culture). If you aren’t so interested in using it with human beings, you won’t actually get that much out of being in the country apart from eating different food and taking nice photos.
If people like languages for reading, history, listening to the radio or TV, that’s fine, but it’s important to be honest about it. All of these interests are great, but not necessarily related to speaking a language with natives. In this case, being in the country makes little difference.

Speaking before travelling

As I said above, I strongly feel that if you can start speaking now before you go to a country, then you will have the momentum behind you to speak on arrival. Even though it’s not my usual strategy, due to my own particular unique travel style, I have indeed done this before myself!

I made the decision that I was going to move to Brazil for the first time several months in advance, while still living in Toulouse in the south of France, and decided that I didn’t want to slow myself down on arrival. So I started learning Portuguese then. Yes, you read that right I learned Portuguese while living in France.

When I say “learned” I don’t mean that I simply bought some grammar book, or downloaded some ultimately useless pirated audio or software. I went to Orkut.com (which at the time [2005] was the main social networking site in many countries… Facewhat?), found the Toulouse community of Brazilians, saw it was pretty active and posted that I wanted to meet up to speak Portuguese. Someone answered, met up with me and helped me along.

We met up several times a week, and I struggled at first but did indeed manage to reach a rudimentary stage of speaking without simply using Spanish instead. Then when I arrived in Brazil I had the best possible start ever in a country, where I could communicate my thoughts and make deep friendships right from the start; something that is still a challenge for me at the very start when I arrive with no preparation. I still had a long way to go, but that head start lead to one of my best travel experiences yet.

Speaking is the key, not being in the country

Right now in my life, I enjoy moving to different countries and getting to know locals by learning their language; usually to levels that allow me to ultimately have very deep conversations with them. But this is my style of travel; “language tourism” or whatever you may call it. I’m a traveller and interested in social aspects of culture, well before I would ever call myself a language learner. Languages will always be a means to an end for me.

Because of that, it’s handy and fun for me to learn on arrival. I’ve made many mistakes in this process and learned the best way to do it. Some of these mistakes are easy to explain and blog about and others aren’t. So no matter how well I can attempt to explain it, you will indeed run into many challenges you hadn’t expected when moving to a country. This is all part of the adventure after all! But thinking it will be very easy to learn a language in an entirely different environment that you are not used to, can be quite short-sighted!

There is nothing about being in a country that means you will learn its language. You can always create an English-speaking bubble or be antisocial or shy. Whether you learn it or not depends on your commitment, not on changing your latitude and longitude.

If you aren’t in the country yet, then find ways to speak right now so you don’t have to worry about the initial bump. Then when you do arrive, it will be so much easier! If you are in the country, then stop thinking that being there is enough and that you’ll magically start speaking with time. You WON’T. Not unless you look at the reasons you aren’t speaking now and try to solve them.

Have you been abroad and found a way to speak the language despite challenges listed here? Or did you run into other challenges? Are you preparing now before moving to a new country? Let us know in the comments!
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Why moving to a country may not lead to learning the language & what learners & expats CAN do is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Language, culture and context are intertwined

Benny — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:53:38 +0000

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I am not really that passionate about languages.

It’s unlikely you’ll see me ever studying a language like Latin or ancient Greek, or picking a language based on integrate grammar points or because its phonemes or particular tones could be a “fun challenge”. There are people who do like these things and that’s great!

But to me, languages are a means to an end. I choose my languages based on cultures that I wish to get to know.

What really makes a language hard

What makes a language difficult is not some impersonal list of grammar and vocabulary comparisons with your mother tongue, but the context and culture of how you’ll be learning and using it. Your mentality will mean that you will end up being your worst enemy and ultimately it will be your own fault for making the language hard.

Adapting to these issues is part of the language learning journey, and I’m attempting to adapt myself right now!

Dutch may seem like an “easy” language to learn after German, but I’m actually running into a few problems! No, I don’t need a language teacher to come to my rescue and explain prepositions or separable verbs to me. Dutch culture is what I am having trouble with.

It’s surprisingly difficult to make new Dutch friends here in Amsterdam compared to other places I’ve lived in! It’s not north-European coldness, as I definitely didn’t have this issue in Berlin and I can’t see it being a problem when in Ireland either. But there definitely is greater distance with strangers here than what I have gotten used to in other places.

However, making the claim that it’s simply too hard to overcome cultural problems is the same lazy excuse about the language being hard so many people fall on. I prefer to understand the problem, especially my contribution to it.

Cultural context

For example, one of the toughest language challenges I’ve ever faced was to learn French. Before any French readers beam with pride about it being that complex, my problem was actually getting along with Parisians. After 9 months in Paris I simply had to give up and move somewhere else. It wasn’t until years later that I started to understand what the real problem was.

Here in Amsterdam I’m slowly starting to find pieces of the puzzle too. For example, the Dutch seem incredibly organised and take out diaries to plan any meeting. I feel like the most important Dutch phrase I’ve learned so far is Ik heb geen tijd (I’ve got no time), as they see how packed their calendar is (and this includes students and those working part-time!)

So my usual “we should meet up some time!” is actually a terrible thing to say here if I do want to meet them later. If you don’t propose a time and place, several days, or even weeks, in advance, and have them check their paper or smartphone diary, then it’s unlikely to ever take place. This is a generalisation of course, but something that several foreigners and Dutch have been confirming for me.

This means that I have to adapt myself, propose a time (which for me is quite hard as I prefer to be spontaneous and I’m certainly not very organised! I’m only inviting people out for a coffee, not coordinating a space shuttle launch) and try to figure out what else could be causing the problem. Perhaps it’s my personality, perhaps it’s because they know I’m leaving soon, perhaps it’s because I need a proper introduction from a friend rather than meeting them randomly, and maybe some people simply just don’t want to make new friends.

I’ll continue to investigate – as this is my real main reason to be here: to understand the Dutch people and how they think. This is obviously way harder to do from the outside.

Surprisingly, I feel that my level of Dutch is not the issue here. People have been very encouraging and interested to hear me speak. As always, it’s giving me a major edge over other foreigners, but not quite enough!

Despite these issues, my Dutch is improving quickly and I’m already comfortable to converse with people, and those in the email list will continue getting more detailed updates about that. However, if I don’t start getting more consistent practice soon then reaching my goal of fluency will be much harder.

Non academic challenges

This is why I get annoyed by people who think their language progress is measurable by the number of words they “know” and other such purely content-based criteria. It separates a language from its culture and context of use.

Saying one language or another is easy or hard because of this or that point ignores how easy it will be for you to speak it. In many cases it’s actually dramatically easier than you thought because most people all around the world are eager to help you learn their language. Despite what people told me, this is definitely true in Amsterdam too. This encouragement will feed back into your progress more than impersonal courses ever can.

If their end goal isn’t to speak with natives, that’s fine. Just be clear about it; then content-based criteria are indeed very useful to gauge how well you can read etc.

But to speak with natives, how does that help if you wouldn’t be able to follow body language quirks, social context differences, and avoid cultural taboos? These are much more important for maintaining pleasant conversations than occasionally having to ask what something means.

This is one of the many reasons I feel that people should learn with people. Using the language with human beings will not only force you to learn to develop and improve your language skills quicker, in spoken situations relevant to you (classrooms and courses all tend towards being too generic) but it will give you an insight into things you’ll never learn in a language lesson that will be much more important.

A language can never exist just in a book. It’s deeply connected to the culture that uses it and to how you use it with that culture. Separate that culture and context and then all you really have left is something useful for passive use of a language, and not for communication.

Thoughts on this? Let me know in the comments below!
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Language, culture and context are intertwined is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

First week settling into Amsterdam

Benny — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:27:29 +0000

This detailed post describes how my first week in Amsterdam went.

As requested, I’ll be giving regular updates on how I’ve been adjusting to a new culture and learning a new language. In future I’ll send this update (which will likely be much shorter and include occasional videos) to the Language Hacking League, so sign up for that e-mail on the right of the site or at the end of this post to receive more! Next week I’ll include a video tour of my flat in Dutch (with subtitles) just for people on that list!

Day 0 – Arriving exhausted

Calling this day 1 would imply that it was firstly an entire day in Amsterdam, and secondly that I was in some way lucid enough to experience sensations of time passing.

Neither of these are true.

I started flying on Monday (Day -1) at 11AM EST and got into Brussels at 7AM CET on Tuesday. For the first time in such trips I didn’t get any sleep at all on the red-eye flight, not even a 5 minute wink. This combined with the general annoyances of travelling with all my worldly possessions meant that I arrived in Europe exhausted.

By the time I made it to Amsterdam (by train) a little after midday it had been over a day since I slept. The only thing in the world I wanted was a bed at that time, but being the “super organised” lad I am, I didn’t even have a temporary place to sleep that first night!

Despite all of these problems, I’d end up having one of my most efficient first days in a country yet!

A blog reader met me at the train station to offer a hand in getting me started in the city, likely being quite disappointed that I wasn’t the energetic friendly face from the blog. I looked like crap, needed a shower and felt like a non-Energizer bunny. I kept starting to say something and then forgot mid-sentence what the hell I was talking about, and this was in English!

It was great to have someone to steer me in the right direction – I seriously couldn’t think straight. (Thanks Emma!)

Getting organised

I went online to book a hotel for that night, dumped my bags there and allowed myself a 20 minute nap. I do this all the time anyway, but in general it’s one of the best ways to get over jetlag and exhaustion quicker. Simply going to sleep for 8 hours at 3pm would have messed up my entire first week. So I dragged myself out of bed (with every gadget I own making noise to make sure I got up) and soldiered on!

First thing was first: I needed a bike! I decided to simply buy one brand new in a shop I saw recommended online and I know I’ll easily sell it for 3/4 of the price before I leave.

Next priority: SIM card! Unlike in the states, every other country in the world makes it very easy and cheap to get a prepaid SIM card with data. The Netherlands stayed true to this! Now I was mobile and had access to searchable Google Maps with GPS.

Finding my apartment on that first day

After a bite to eat I got back online and examined my options. The reason I was so badly organised is because someone told me they had a place for me that would have been perfect, and I had planned to go straight there on arrival. However, she changed her mind the day before I arrived! That was not a fun email to read!

So I hadn’t been looking at all for several days – not ideal considering how incredibly hard everyone told me finding a place in Amsterdam would be. But as tired as I was, I still had a lot of experience finding a place to live quickly. One thing I do is to never put all my eggs in one basket.

I had been looking hard for the week before coming, using twitter and my email list to see if someone could help me out, answering a bunch of free ads online and writing in several forums. But nothing had come of that. So I decided to just fork over €25 to put my own ad up on kamernet.nl. I got a couple of replies, but nothing solid. I needed to put on my thinking cap! I had a sneaky idea of rewording my ad a particular way and then I got a load of replies!

One of those replies was the lady who had “secured” her place for me, but all the other interesting ones got a reply of – “I’ll email you as I’m arriving to see if it’s still free”. This way they wouldn’t wastefully hold it for me, but I hadn’t burned any bridges. I’m very glad I did this because I got in touch with my second favourite place, emailed, got a reply and went and saw it that first night!

At 10pm I was so unbelievably tired; I really can’t emphasise this enough! But I made it to this place, checked it out and confirmed that I wanted it. It’s only a 10 minute cycle from central Amsterdam and a gorgeous apartment. I’ll record a video this week, try to do it in Dutch, and share it in next week’s update sent to the email list.

Day 1 – moving in

So, I was very glad that I had refused to just go to sleep on arrival, since I had solved my most pressing issues all before my first night’s sleep! I went back to the hotel, appropriately on Oudezijds Voorburgwal, the famous red light district! And I got a great night’s sleep!

Day 1 wasn’t so interesting, since all I did was move my things in, do some shopping, unpack, walk around the area. Rather than renting an apartment to myself, I actually have two Dutch flatmates! But I have only seen one so far, and I’ve only seen him twice all week. The flat is weird in that we have our own separate dining rooms and living rooms; you’ll see in the video!

Day 2 – getting started on Dutch

Convincing the Dutch to listen to my first attempts at their language would have required enthusiasm and energy; neither of which I had on arrival. So two days into the country I still didn’t even know a few basic words!

Normally, I do some decent studying on the flight over, but I was in a horrible stalemate on the whole flight of being too tired to focus and yet not tired enough to fall asleep.

So I got started on my study material after having moved into the flat. All I had so far was Rosetta Stone, which I will be using intensively for the purposes of writing a very detailed review to compare it to other language learning materials.

After a week I’ve gotten through all of level 1 (of 3) and the software still hasn’t told me how to say “please”! (But I can tell you that’s a red dress or a green sock; clearly more important…) So I quickly learned that this is not the kind of thing to use when you need to speak immediately, nor was it designed for that. Its possible benefits after going through the full program will be something I’ll end up discussing.

Since I really can’t rely on Rosetta Stone to help me quickly, I’ll also be using the Teach Yourself book for the moment, since I’ve found that series good in other languages, as well as SRS on my phone.

However, after getting through the first part of Rosetta Stone I did find one major advantage, which will end up being the main reason I use the program: live video lessons from a human being! Without this I may have given up on using it entirely for the reasons I’ll outline in the final review, but spending almost an hour with a native Dutch tutor is a worthwhile milestone to go through their strange lessons.

The best part is that the tutors stay true to the no-English policy of the program (which is a bit too simplified at times; you simply cannot represent every concept with images…), which meant that the first time I used it I was in a 50 minute session that was only in Dutch, and I was participating actively!

Like any good teacher she did not give in and switch over to the student’s native language, so this got me into speaking the language in a way that may not have happened in an initial attempt at Dutch in the street. Someone getting paid to help you is of course going to have its advantages! I can only really do this twice a week though because the times of the lessons are dreadfully inconvenient (4AM anyone?) for anyone not living in the states, apart from two 11PM sessions…

The “conversation” was about what colour the dog is and how many trees there are – very classroom-esque and hardly an actual conversation, but at least it gave me that initial boost. I used it as an opportunity to go beyond the script and threw in a few other observations about the photos and managed to tell her that I’ve just moved to Amsterdam etc.

Day 3 – First impressions of Amsterdam

Now it was time to cycle around the city a little bit!

The weather was terrible the day I arrived (which certainly didn’t help how I was already feeling quite grumpy!) but ever since then the sun has been splitting the stones (as we say in Ireland).

Cycling around Amsterdam is such a pleasant experience, especially when coming directly from car-obsessed USA. Bridges over canals everywhere, proper cycle lanes with special bike-specific traffic lights at many junctions, and priority for bikes in many places! It’s great!

And most Dutch bikes are like mine; they have no handbrakes! It takes some getting used to, but you peddle backwards to brake.

The one thing that’s quite hard to get used to is the amount of bikes! I’ve never seen so many at once – I’m not used to being among so many cyclists, so I’ve had some trouble getting used to the “bike rules of the road” and have had to overuse “sorry” (also said in Dutch) quite a lot as I nearly crash into people…

The city is gorgeous and I’m really glad I picked it! I’ll try to spend as little time as possible at the apartment and even do my typing and online work while out. I want to absorb as much of this city as I can!

I have had some trouble adjusting to the prices though – I’ve been living in relatively cheap places like South America and Asia for quite a while (even last year in Europe in Berlin and Budapest were not that pricey), but Amsterdam is definitely an expensive city. Ideally I’d spend all day out, but I’ll have to be home to cook most of the time if I don’t want to run out of money again!

Everywhere I go refuses to give me tap water, which is so damn annoying. If I’m already paying €10 for a very basic meal, or entrance to a night club, that’s apparently not enough! At least €2.50 needs to be added on top of that for a tiny bottle of water I could down in one gulp.

It seems pretty much all of the centre is like this. You don’t need to be rich to travel and one way I have been able to stretch my money so far is by going out regularly but simply not consuming anything but water. Drinking “socially” is a waste of time in my opinion. It’s unfortunate that I won’t be able to do that here. I’ll probably end up getting one orange juice and sip it all night as if it were €5000 wine.

Weekend – Getting social!

Since I’ve been far from Europe, it’s been a while since I properly flexed my polyglot muscles, so I’ve been enjoying speaking a lot of Italian and Portuguese especially over the weekend! I went out to an Erasmus party first and was surprised to see how late it started. Nights out in Amsterdam seem to be similar timing to in Spain, with nobody going to nightclubs until 1AM at the earliest.

I tried my Dutch with some people there and they shot me down. I suppose I could conclude from this that all hope is lost, I should give up the mission entirely and it’s true that the Dutch will never help me, but that’s a crybaby approach of overreacting to a bad situation to use it in the first place.

Despite what some people think, I have no intention of walking up to strangers, tapping them on the shoulder and spouting Dutch at them. Nightclubs and similar events are probably the worst possible places to meet people (I go there to dance badly with friends I already have, not to make new ones).

I don’t expect everyone to enthusiastically want to help me learn their language, but all I need to do is find a few people that do and hang out with them I really don’t see it as that complicated. I’ve been warned that in Amsterdam “nobody” will want to speak Dutch with me, but I’ve heard this defeatist tune sung many many times before in other places. I will meet people who don’t want to help me, and that’s quite fine! I meet them all the time everywhere else – I just filter them out and find people who will help me.

I hung out with my Brazilian friend Letícia the next afternoon. (We worked in the same company as translators and she translated the Language Hacking Guide to Portuguese). Then Saturday night I went to a Couchsurfing party. Going regularly to such events would lead me down the expat trap and I’d likely learn little to no Dutch, but I was curious to talk to foreigners living here to find out about their experiences to help mine, and of course to meet some locals!

Yesterday – all day just in Dutch

Now that I’ve properly settled in, I finally felt ready to throw myself fully into the language. Yesterday I went shopping and asked where food was, asked for directions in the centre, asked a kid on my street about his cat, ordered lunch and did all other little things, while spending all day outside, just in Dutch.

Since I was properly trying, the myth of people forcing English on me vanished. Not one single person did it. It’s pretty clear from my hesitation, immense lack of vocabulary and accent that I’m not from here, but perhaps not having a strong English accent in general, and having an OK R means that they simply can’t place me anywhere and it would be rude to presume I speak English (I could be Russian or Greek or German or French for all they know).

So for brief superficial use of the language like this I don’t see it ever being an issue as long as I can find the right words to use.

On Sunday night I had a more natural conversation entirely in Dutch online. I added a local I met at the Couchsurfing party to Facebook and started chatting in there. Obviously in such an environment all the pressure is removed and I can use a dictionary and take my time to form full coherent sentences – for an entire hour we chatted away just in Dutch about many things.

So I am indeed using the language, but I haven’t thrown myself into proper in-person conversations as quickly in the same way I did in my first week in Berlin. Simply convincing locals to help me will be an important part of my work here, but I already know what is required for that and now that I’ve eased myself in (for an entire week; way too long as it is!) and have the base vocabulary I need, I’ll be meeting up with people for full conversations in person in Dutch this week.

Obviously, I’ll still be quite basic in what I can say, but so far so good for my end-target of conversational fluency by the end of May

One thing I started was to tweet in Dutch at least once a day, so you can follow that at my new account @meertalig.

My German is definitely helping a bit, so reading and even writing isn’t that huge of a challenge. But pronunciation is going to be a big part of my work. It’s been difficult for me to get used to the guttural ‘g’ (which would be more like the ‘g’ in go when used in German), as well as quite different vowel sounds. How much German really helps will be more clear as I get deeper into the language. Although most of what I am reading about Dutch so far is actually different to German.

Another challenge will be to simply not morph my German into Dutch, so I was happy to invite a German friend to stay with me for a few days next week, when I’ll be spending two whole days speaking just in German in the middle of the Dutch mission. I’ll make sure to speak plenty of German while here as part of my strategy to not mix up similar languages.

You’ll hear more about that and how I’ll have continued my progress next week though To follow the story then, join the email list!

If you have any thoughts on this first week or questions about anything I haven’t mentioned, let me know in the comments!
Similar Posts:

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First week settling into Amsterdam is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Communicating without words – my fun non-spoken train ride in India

Benny — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:03:22 +0000

Words. Who needs them?

Of course, if you want a really high academic level in a language then learning vocabulary, by whatever way you do it, will get you there. Most exams will test you on your memory capacity for even some obscure words that you’ll never actually need in real life. And some people rely on systems that show off the exact number of words they ‘know’.

Such high numbers may sound impressive, (Hey baby, check me out! I know 30,000 words of your language!) but usually these same people are such perfectionists that they may never actually even bother to go out for a drink with a native or other learner and just socialise in the language.

Their understanding of efficiency is flawed in my opinion. Practice in real world situations is always the best way to improve your language skills. I tell people all the time to communicate from day one and it’s the premise of my book. But people (who haven’t read it yet) always ask me the same question:

How do I communicate from day one if I don’t have any words??

I do this using a combination of extrapolation (as explained in my first week of trying to speak German), social dynamics, body language and psychology. If I can do it, I’ll try to record a video of my first ever attempts to use my next (spoken) language with a native to demonstrate this better.

But for the moment, I’d like to share a story with you that shows how far I took this. Reading non-verbal cues is such a powerful tool to language learners that I managed to spend a whole day communicating with people who spoke no English and whose language I didn’t even know the name of.

Travel in India

Two years ago (before I had this blog) I went to India for two months. It was the only time I was ever in a country (for longer than a few days) with no intention to learn a new language. I actually went to find a nice beach to work on.

My strange “balance” of working half-time for one month and then working like a dog (if dogs do 75-hour work-weeks) for the other month was not a particularly clever idea, but it’s how I did it as a freelance translator. After a full month in Palolem in the south of Goa, my laptop actually melted (it was over 40ºC many days and I was using the hell out of it) so I didn’t have much of a choice but to use my final weeks to get to know at least one corner of India a little better.

I decided to check out Hampi, the incredible ruins of a former empire. I took the bus to get there from Goa and the “roads” there made the trip feel like my bus was bunny humping another bus all the way. Not pleasant at all. So after a few days checking out some breathtaking sites, I’d head back to Goa and do it by train this time.

Hampi to Morgao train ride

Hampi isn’t that far away from über-touristy Goa, but it’s far enough that Indian tourists at the site would constantly ask to take photos with me, since it seemed white ‘goras‘ were quite the novelty.

So when I took the train ride, and didn’t opt for the 1st class (where the few other European tourists were travelling), I had the best experience riding with Indians for a day. Many of them seemed quite poor and I could see that they hadn’t learned any English yet. So it was time for me to break out some non-verbal communication!

The train would stop at random stations for just a couple of minutes and there would be a few people walking around selling random items. I saw the perfect ice-breaker item: A Rubik’s cube! I used to be able to solve it myself following some basic tactics, but I wanted to try out an app I had recently installed on my jailbroken iPhone. (I bought the iPhone just before my computer melted when money seemed plentiful. The combination of not being able to work, needing to buy a new laptop and this new expensive purchase meant that I’d be in credit card debt for a while. Yet another reason I don’t like Apple haha).

Anyway, I got back on the train and handed my Rubik’s cube to someone and gestured for him to shake it up for me. He understood immediately what I meant and turned it several times. I handed it to another guy and indicated the same. Soon, it was passed all over the carriage and then I asked for it back. I was saying the words, but the gestures were way more important here. Anything I said without gestures was lost entirely on my fellow passengers.

Finally I got it back, took out my iPhone (which really got their attention. Two years ago you were not likely to see an iPhone in a random Indian 2nd class train), opened up the Rubik’s solver app and showed them how I took a photo of each face. Then in about 20 moves (following the app’s instructions) I solved it! I gave it back to someone and asked him to turn it again. This time everyone was talking and it took a whole 5 minutes before I saw the cube again. I had an audience of dozens of people watching me take the photos, and then solve the 3-D instructions.

I had the attention of the entire carriage without needing to say a word.

My new friends

They saw that I had a camera with me and called for my attention when something noteworthy was passing by. It’s thanks to them that I got a glimpse of several monkeys that took over some train stations and saw the spectacular waterfall that the train ride is famous for. I would have seen it as we passed under it, but they called me over to look at precisely when the view of it was best.

When I showed them the output on my camera’s LCD screen, they gestured that the shot was gorgeous. Even if they had rudimentary English they would have attempted saying at least “good”, but we didn’t really need that.

I loved the inexpensive food that came through every few hours. For the equivalent of just a few cents I ate some spectacular samosas and had some great tea, Aloo Gobi and rice. India of course is so easy for vegetarians. Those selling the food actually did speak English, but once they were gone the others had a great laugh at my pathetic attempts to eat it all with my hands. Usually I get around the issue with Indian food by wrapping it up in a Naan, but I was doing an OK job of getting it down the hatch despite some bumps and turns the train was making.

Without me needing to say anything, the guy in the next seat offered me a napkin. It was kind of obvious I needed it!

The singing girl

And then came my favourite part of the trip!

A young girl and her mother were going through the train singing for some loose change. Probably because I looked like I had the most of that, they came and sat down in front of me. I took out my video camera (which I sold shortly after; I’ve since been doing all my video using a pocket still camera) and started recording:

You can see the little girl grin a few seconds into it. This is when I rotated the viewfinder so she could see herself in the shot. She tried to avoid looking at it to stay focused on the music I absolutely loved this music and am happy to share it with you all!

When they were done I handed her the camera to show her the video replay. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone’s face ever light up so quickly! (See the main photo of the post as she watches it for the first time) She looked at me and said something that all the context made me knew what she meant.

Can I show this to my friends/family real quick??

I didn’t understand the words of course, but I was sure she said this. I did an Indian yes-nod (different to the western up-and-down one) and she scurried off. The camera was worth several hundred Euro, but I didn’t have to worry about it at all. A few minutes later she was back and her father seemed very pleased to see me and how happy I made her.

I generally avoided taking pictures of people since it can be disrespectful, but the mother and daughter team and the father absolutely insisted that I get a shot of them! She was still holding on to the camera, distracted by her own little tiny-TV appearance.

The international language of context

Keep in mind that whatever they were speaking (Hindi? Marathi? Kannada?) I didn’t understand a single word of it. But I knew the girl wasn’t going to steal the camera, and I knew that the family wanted me to take a photo of them. Most importantly, I knew that I was welcome on that train and that the random people I came across were generous, kind and friendly.

People always underestimate their ability to communicate across cultures. Learning the language is a crucial way to do this, but when you are starting off you can still actually get by pretty decently if you really try to read people. A few different gestures (like the yes-no nod I mentioned) get blown out of proportion – the vast majority of non-verbal communication between human beings is definitely international.

Travel is all about discovering the differences, many of them truly beautiful, between cultures. But it has also shown me the vast amount that we all have in common.

We know when others are happy, we can “feel” it in the air that we are welcome or not-welcome, and we can read so much about the situation from non-verbal cues. A typical English-speaking tourist may go for the strategy of just shouting what they are trying to say, but apart from being quite rude and inappropriate, that achieves nothing. It’s all about reading people, and trying your best to be understood and get your point across by whatever means necessary.

It’s not all about waving your arms frantically or playing charades. Look into a person’s eyes to see how they feel, smile to share how happy you are, and open your eyes to the situation around you. Many times the context tells a story in itself that words can never hope to convey, and that may be enough for you to even make some new friends.

I wasn’t learning a new language in India, but when I am learning a new language, I throw myself into using it right from the start. Even if I have just freshly learned only 10 words, I cannot possibly say that I’m “starting from scratch”. I’ve got almost 3 decades of experience in communicating with human beings, both verbally and non-verbally and that certainly counts for quite a lot.

——————–

So please stop worrying about how much words you don’t know. In many cases your ability to communicate may be more full than you actually realised.

What do you think? Can the words you fill your language with be less important than you previously thought? Of course, you can’t explain very complex concepts without complex language and I never plan on debating Kantean philosophy by reading context and body language, but sometimes you can live the simple parts of your life in a foreign culture no problem, even when you are just starting out to learn its language.

This is an excellent tool for “filling in the gaps” as you are starting off with a language.

Let me know what you think about this in the comments below
Similar Posts:

----------------------------
Communicating without words – my fun non-spoken train ride in India is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Happy Paddy’s day!

Benny — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:42:56 +0000

Public service announcement: To all American readers, please call this day Paddy’s day and not Patty‘s (or Patti‘s) day. Say the original St. Patrick’s Day or use the Irish nickname with d’s. We spell it with d’s instead of t’s because it’s based on the Irish version of the name Pádraig.

We aren’t celebrating burgers today or Saint Patricia, for feck’s sake!! I’ve seen so many arseways spellings of “Paddy’s” on signs all over Austin (now that I’m here learning ASL) and online on twitter and Facebook, that this issue really does need to be addressed!!

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, Happy St. Patrick’s day!

St. Patrick in a nutshell

It may be a surprise to hear that St. Patrick was not born in Ireland. He was a Roman Briton who was captured when he was 16 and enslaved to work in Ireland. When he eventually escaped he went on to become a bishop and made it his life’s mission to bring Christianity to Ireland.

For those of you who don’t know much about this holiday, it has nothing to do with the colour green. If any Americans pinch me today for not wearing a green t-shirt they are going to regret it! (But I’ll probably be sporting my silly green hat).

I’m not religious myself, but the day is actually primarily a religious holiday. Ireland’s patron saint is honoured for bringing something to the country that few could argue had a huge impact on its history over the next 1500 years.

What I find most interesting about St. Patrick is that he would make the biggest difference in Ireland because he spoke the language. He wasn’t the first person to attempt to bring Christianity to the country, but he was the most successful because he had learned the Celtic language of its people rather than just rambling on at them in Latin.

In Ireland we have parades and masses to celebrate this day. Parades share small communities and clubs of that town have been emulated all around the world. The holiday has nothing to do with drinking, but because Irish people drink more than they do in most countries anyway, this aspect of the holiday sometimes gets coupled with it.

In recent years there have been attempts to use this as an attempt to bring more attention to the national language (the campaign is known as seachtain na Gaeilge), so I’d like to share some stuff relevant to that language, as well as some Irish culture, with you in this post!

Gaeilge

Another public service announcement I’ll throw in here is that when someone says they speak “Irish” they don’t mean the accent they have in English (see below for that). Ireland has its own language and you can find out about it in this detailed post I wrote about it:

Learning the Irish language (Gaeilge)

If you’re in a hurry then a quick tip while you are drinking today is to say “Sláinte” instead of cheers; pronounced slawn-cheh.

The Irish language, presented by a leprechaun

If you’re curious to hear what Irish sounds like, then check out this video I made about the language itself. I included some beautiful Dublin and Donegal scenery and subtitles of course. And it’s a good opportunity for you to laugh at me prancing around the country dressed up like a ridiculous looking leprechaun!

(Click through to the post to watch this video if reading this by RSS/e-mail).

You can also watch this video in English and five other languages, with all the links given here.

An Treoir Teanga – The Language Hacking Guide in Irish

For those of you interested in speaking any language, you can actually read my best advice that has been translated to Irish by natives from the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking regions in the west of Ireland), by getting the full version of the Language Hacking Guide.

This full version of the guide has been available in Irish for a few months, but I’ve finally had the time to put up the full sales page and subtitles to the video in Irish too!

I’m not sure how many sales pages you will find online in Irish, so check this one out and get yourself a copy of the guide for a unique chance to read about speaking a language, entirely in Irish!

You get the same content if you buy the full version on the English page of course. The download comes with 20 other languages too, including English, so you can use that in parallel as you read to understand the text entirely.

An Treoir Teanga

What is RSS? What is Burning Man? How to learn Tango? Also in Irish!

Long before I started this blog, I had a multilingual Youtube channel. It was always a lot of work, but I translated the commentary of my documentaries to Irish when I did it to other languages.

In fact, back in 2008 when I had my ticket to go to Burning Man (which I’m considering returning to this year), I decided to apply for a hard-to-get media badge. Usually you need some experience, credentials or a very interesting twist to get this badge. In my application I told them I would make the first ever documentary about the event in Irish and of course they had no choice but to give it to me! This meant that, unlike other attendees, I could point my camera everywhere and record some interesting action

Although the Irish version has not been viewed many times on Youtube, National Geographic Italy invited me to showcase the Italian version of the documentary on NatGeo adventure. I was in Italy when this happened and was recognised in the street in Milan from someone who had seen me on TV The Italian version was the most important one, but I wouldn’t have been able to record it if I hadn’t done it in Irish first!

Anyway, I digress! Check out all my videos about several cool topics, all with audio as Gaeilge gathered on my Irish language video blog page. One of my favourites is the documentary about living in Tenerife and hiking up mount Teide, which I edited together just after having spent three weeks in the Gaeltacht.

How to speak English like the Irish

This is by far the most popular blog post I’ve written to date with a detailed explanation of some important differences in how English is spoken by Irish people.

Grammar girl is kind enough to share a shortened version of my main post with her readers and listeners today! Check out the original one here if you’d like to sound more Irish, or at least understand us better!

Speak with an Irish accent

Luck of the Irish!

The term luck of the Irish is quite a strange one considering Ireland’s history. Ireland has suffered through being conquered by Vikings and the British and the vast majority if its population have narrowly escaped famines, war, starvation, prejudice and were forced to emigrate in the last few hundreds years, and these were certainly not lucky!

Things were going great for Ireland in the 90s, but unfortunately the worldwide economic crisis hit us worse than most countries and resulting personal, business and government debts will leave scars on the country for a generation. If anything, the term luck of the Irish should only be used ironically!

But perhaps those who had emigrated were the first to quickly find their “pot of gold” in the land and gold rushes in California. It’s one of the only ways I can see historical logic in the phrase.

Anyway, those of you who know that I am sceptical will understand why I believe that luck simply doesn’t exist. A wise Irishman I met on the road once reminded me that every man makes his own luck. With that in mind, I wrote this post that explains how you can actually learn to be lucky!

Luck of the Irish? Or can anyone learn to be lucky?

—————

This time last year I was back in Ireland for Paddy’s day and you can see some photos of how the parade was is in my hometown on my flickr account. It was great to be back home, but today I’m going to experience it for the first time à la américaine.

Apart from pedantically correcting pubs for misspelling the day they are so enthusiastically celebrating, I look forward to sharing what I feel it truly means to be Irish with my American friends here. I hope this post gets that idea across to you today Let me know how you’re celebrating it in the comments below!

Slán agus go n-eirí libh!
Similar Posts:

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Happy Paddy’s day! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Settling in, first impressions of American Sign Language & video tour of my house

Benny — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 19:02:57 +0000

I’ve been in Austin a few days and I can already see that it’s going to be a fun month here!!

I have actually intentionally not been out so much, in order to do some writing and ASL learning in preparation before the city explodes into a social frenzy from next week when the immense SxSW takes over the city! Quite a lot of people I know will be here (I’ll actually be hosting several friends who have similarly sized blogs to mine) and there will be far too many fun things to do every day!

Settling in

My first days are always about sorting out all the things necessary for living in a place over several weeks or months. The process involved in doing this can be very different between countries.

Since I’ve lived in the states before nearly everything I’ve been doing (such as settling into the house, finding good food, getting my bearings in the city etc.) has been very simple here and Austin is turning out to be a perfect place to settle in for a month!

But there have been challenges and frustrating expenses.

Based on my experience, the states has the worst prepaid mobile phone rates in the world. For example for data here, the same 2GB data limit plus a SIM card typically costs me $15-30 in Europe, South America and Asia, but here it was $96. Since I couldn’t sign up to a contract, I could only use one carrier (T-mobile). There were other options, but they were actually much more expensive believe it or not!

The plus side is that it comes with unlimited texts and calls. Normally I wouldn’t care about that at all, since I only use my phone to receive calls, but I was shocked to find out last time I lived here that you have to pay to receive calls! I ended up spending over $60 in credit and I only made one phonecall in my entire month last time. From a European perspective this is nothing short of ridiculous. So at least I’m covered on unlimited received calls this time(!!)

Buying a second hand bike has also been a big headache – I usually get a sturdy second-hand one in most countries for the equivalent of $30-50, but no functional decent bike on Craigslist seems to be going for anything less than $120; and even those are very basic and tattered looking. Although I’ve been told that this may be because of SxSW hikes. Luckily the bus system here is very good and a comfortable $30 for the month.

Then again there have been some cool benefits to the likes of Craigslist!! Once Apple announced the iPad 2 there was a predictable frenzy of sales of the iPad 1 to trade-up for it. I took advantage of people’s silly need to have the absolute latest device and haggled an iPad1 down to $350 (about €250 to me), including a case with bluetooth keyboard worth $100. With the case & keyboard, it actually looks like a mini laptop!

The amount of activity on Craigslist here meant there were loads of people selling the same thing. Copying and pasting the same haggling e-mail was like shooting fish in a barrel.

I’m not a fan of Apple’s interface (preferring Android by far), but after jailbreaking (or un-fucking-up the OS as I prefer to call it) it’s much more bearable, and this price beats the $1000+ I’d currently have to spend on a new Android system the same size with an external keyboard. I got an iPad since my laptop is actually too bulky to do anything with but leave it on the same desk for the duration of my stay anywhere. The size of it makes it very easy to work on, but I won’t be home much for most of this month and it will be good to have a ‘computer’ when I’m out and about.

American Sign Language – attempt two: Tour of my house!

OK, I’m sure you don’t read the blog necessarily to hear me rattle on about my shopping highs and lows! What about the language??

Well, you’ll be glad to hear that things are going very well so far! This is turning out to be one of the most fascinating languages I have learned, and I’m amazed to see other polyglots don’t include this one in their list (Although Stujay made a fantastic and clever video with some ASL and Morse code!)

The first video I made myself in ASL was based on just trying to mimic someone else, and I was doing it with zero feedback. Lots of people gave me some tips and after a few days (I’ve been getting private lessons to start me off), I feel a bit more confident and you can probably see that as I give a tour of the Austin house I’ll be sharing with my friends from next week. Check it out and see how I do!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3UVePr2_3I

It’s important to keep in mind that this whole video is scripted and I prepared what I was going to say and got feedback on how I was signing it so that I could improve. I’m hoping to be able to sign to a level similar to what I have in this video, except for the crucial part of doing it spontaneously (i.e. genuinely communicating with people) by the end of the month.

First impressions of the language

After just a few days of exposure I have the following first impressions of American Sign Language

What I apply to spoken languages will definitely work with sign language. I’ll have to adapt certain techniques to fit with signing obviously, and have indeed have brand new challenges, but so far nothing major seems to be holding me back.
As many people might, I imagined sign language was all in the fingers, hands and arms. In fact, you have to put your whole upper body into it. Not including emotional facial expressions and many other features are like a spoken language’s natural rhythm (compared to speaking it monotone) and actually essential to distinguishing the meaning.
One example of non-arm communication is how you use your eyebrows. If I furrow my brow this is an indication of a wh- question, so the same sign you see me do in the video for “here” would actually become “what”. Squinting, raising your eyebrows, pursing your lips and even twitching your nose can all change signs or be meanings in themselves. This will take some getting used to.
Remembering signs is not hard at all – yes, some are pretty obvious in retrospect (like the sign I did for house), but I have been applying a form of my image association used for vocabulary with unfamiliar signs.
Signers are much more expressive than hearing people are. They move their whole body and show extremely distinct and varied facial expressions during an entire conversation. After using sign language, communicating in spoken language can almost seem dull and emotionless in comparison. This is something I’ll have to work on since I’m still too expressionless when I sign. I can imagine someone reserved and with little personality as having great trouble getting past the basics in sign language.

One interesting side-effect of learning sign language has been that when I talk with non-signers and they use body language in some way, I associate what they are doing with a sign that has nothing to do with what they are actually trying to convey (since they don’t know sign language). This is very confusing! I feel like I’m going to start reading into people’s normal arm movements as “signs” and I’ll have to learn to “switch off” ASL reading when not with signers, because most of a speaker’s arm waving is actually meaningless. Not reading people’s arm & hand movements is harder than it sounds when you are trying hard to do it other times!
While I am still using a form of “pidgin ASL” in the video, most of the time the word order is not necessarily that close to English.
There are features that make ASL more like non-English languages than English. For example signs for male/female are similar but stem from different parts of the face. This is like -a/-o in Spanish.

These are just some random first impressions. I’ll continue learning and hopefully I’ll be able to give a much better initial overview of ASL by the end of my time here!

————–

Let me know about what you think of any part of this post or video in the comments below!
Similar Posts:

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Settling in, first impressions of American Sign Language & video tour of my house is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Learning salsa caleña in Colombia [video in Spanish & English]

Benny — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:41:28 +0000

Last year I was living in Colombia, and while I had a language mission to speak any language despite location, and of course learn Colombian Spanish, one of my main projects in the country was actually to dance salsa.

I’ve finally made the time to edit together the footage to share that experience with you in video form, with both English and Spanish commentary

I consider my languages to be a huge asset not so I can just say that I speak them, but because I have learned so many amazing things, had life-altering experiences and made some fantastic friends through these languages. Learning salsa with locals and the experiences I share in this brief video documentary would have been totally impossible for an English-only tourist.

You can see the video documenting my learning experience in English here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnLaZ2ms4io

Or watch it in Spanish instead here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BORG33MVt4U

Based on recommendations from Dave, a friend of mine and blogger based in Medellín I found a great salsa school and instructor (note: my instructorhas since started her own school, so if you are in the city and want to get in touch, her address is Carrera 43a # 25-233 Poblado , loma de San Julian and her email is ytherrera AT hotmail DOTcom) and my typical day in Medellín included intensive salsa lessons there. Yamile, my instructor, was fun and a great friend and eased me into learning the essentials, while making sure I had a blast during the lessons thanks to her quirky sense of humour.

She especially liked playfully taking the piss out of how Peninsular my Spanish is! (When I said something particularly Spanish she’d tease me with joder tío, qué dizzzzes?) Despite that I’ve tried to sound a bit more Colombian in the Spanish version of the video.

Cali – my favourite place of the year

But I have to say that the highlight of the Colombian trip, and I’d go as far to say my entire year, was the short number of days that I spent in Cali, Colombia’s third city.

I stayed at Jovita’s hostel, which included free group salsa lessons (as shown in the video), that I followed up with private lessons. The owners of the hostel brought me out on the town with them and made sure that I got to see a side of Cali that I’d never forget.

As a lone traveller, it usually takes a while before I meet people willing to bring me so deep into their social circle, but after just meeting them, Katy and Carlos could see that I was genuinely interested in getting to know the residents and culture of the city and introduced me to so many incredible caleños and took me out with them to several great venues.

This included an amazing dancing competition for the school associated with the salsa lessons, Son de Luz. The dance school is an important part of the community, giving the poor children of the city something to work towards. You can see in the video how talented they were. Salsa is literally getting them off the streets as they make something of their lives.

Imagine my surprise when Jenni (my instructor), Carlos and Katy had arranged for me to dance in front of the judges and the very experienced dancers! With 10 seconds notice, and everyone cheering the only foreigner in the building on, I didn’t really have much of a choice! So I gave my camera to someone and luckily had an excellent end to the above video, since all my other attempts to record real dancing (outside of lessons) were in too poorly lit dance clubs.

It’s the most intensive memory-filled experience I’ve had in a city considering the short time I spent there – I’m used to bouncing from one place to another all the time, but me costó mucho to finally leave Cali.

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(If you liked the above videos, then check out a similar (but better edited) one I made about my experience learning tango in Buenos Aires – that one can be watched with commentary in 7 languages).

I hope culturally relevant asides like this hint as to why I am so passionate to get people to stop focusing on over-studying of their languages and start using them. The other foreigners you see briefly in the group lesson had a weak level of Spanish, but they were trying to understand the teacher anyway and actually learning to dance well because they were focused on communication rather than hiding away behind their doubts until they spoke it perfectly.

They were using the language in a real life situation before they were “ready”.

THIS is what it’s all about for me. A language is a means to an end. If that end is just to say “I speak Spanish” with no use for it, then in my opinion it’s an empty achievement no matter how good your level may be.

Let me know what you think of this video and anything else in the comments below!
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Learning salsa caleña in Colombia

is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

First weeks in the Philippines & video tour of my beach cottage

Benny — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:01:01 +0000

Time for a mission update!

Last time I updated was after a few days in Manila when I had decided to go down south. I made it to Cebu, and went straight to the very south of that island (around Moalboal) to get some time by the sea (I hadn’t been by the sea for about a year).

The opportunity was there so I took a two day intensive open water scuba diving course and got certified just before I had to leave. It was the first time I tried anything like it, and the experience was incredible!

Since I still have the opportunity over the coming weeks, I’m going to extend that to the advanced certificate. The experience of breathing 18m under water with no gear but the scuba breathing apparatus, weights, mask, and wetsuit is thrilling!

Sinulog

Going to Cebu was actually not beneficial to the Tagalog mission – they speak Cebuano there, even if they understand Tagalog. I knew this, but still wanted to experience the Sinulog festival, as well as see another part of the Philippines before settling down a little.

As always in my travels, I arrived alone. However, I soon had a large group of friends to go out with every day that I found on Couchsurfing. We partied late into the night, danced, sang karaoke, watched the parade – the atmosphere was remnant of the Carnival in Brazil. It was hard to say goodbye to them!

My new home – Puerto Galera

Talking with those in Cebu – I got the impression that the best place for me to go – somewhere fun and interesting that spoke Tagalog, but not a polluted city like Manila – was Puerto Galera.

My first impression was not that great – Sabang, where most of the foreign tourists go first, may have among the most incredible dive sites in the world (that I still have to check out), but the town itself was ugly and at night the only thing to see was girly bars. Not my kind of place.

Luckily I found White Beach - this is actually where Manila residents choose to go as tourists – especially on weekends. So there really aren’t that many other white tourists around. I spent a day asking around about prices and eventually found an excellent cottage the next beach over for the equivalent of just a few hundred dollars for the month (all inclusive).

This is one of the cheapest places I’ve lived in for the high standard of living and for having an entire structure to myself!! You can see me give a video tour of it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WX8VbZFyic

[In case you're wondering, my t-shirt says "Tengo la camisa negra" ]

As I said in the Manila update, I worked hard to get a good 3G data plan and I’m glad of it! I have unlimited 3G on my phone, that I can access by USB tether to my laptop. This means it doesn’t matter that I don’t have wifi. In fact, the 3G speed is the same was wifi connections I tried around here! It’s good enough to watch online videos without having to wait and to upload this HD video in less than an hour!

And of course, it’s only a few metres from the beach! I listen to the sounds of the waves crashing to lull me to sleep There are no distractions here so I can get lots done, but it’s a very short motorbike ride to White Beach to party with Manila tourists, and 15 minutes into Puerto Galera town if I need to do any shopping.

Living in such a peaceful area is going to be great, although I get up early and do as much as I can in the day. But I will of course be relaxing while I can – this year is going to be very hectic for me once I leave this beach so I’ll need my batteries recharged!! (You’ll understand as I announce future missions and destinations!)

Late start to the Tagalog mission

While in Cebu I was only really studying grammar (hence the reason for writing my frustrated post about how it doesn’t help you speak), and I didn’t really get much done at all. This means that the mission will only really be five proper intensive weeks. I leave the Philippines for my next destination in exactly one month (February 28th), so I’ll have to do everything I can before then!

Luckily I’ve reached some useful milestones in this first week of really trying! You can always get more frequent mission updates from Facebook or twitter, and I mentioned some milestones there that I’ve reached in the last week since I’ve been in Puerto Galera.

Once I properly tried to just speak people have been (as expected) very encouraging! The first trick was to learn the typical phrases to get me through a standard superficial conversation I’d expect to have (to start off with).

That didn’t take long of course, but sadly it seems I’ve surpassed most of the other white guys (at least here in Puerto Galera) who are permanently living in the Philippines and married to a Filipina just with that. Pretty pathetic guys, come on!

Next thing I’ve been doing is learning lots of vocabulary and forming my own sentences using the grammar I’ve already studied. The book I’ve got has some useful example exercises and I say a few examples to waitresses to make sure I’ve got them.

Starting to converse basically in Tagalog (but not with everyone!)

So I’m currently able to form correct spontaneous phrases but only if I take a while to think about them.

I haven’t quite added these to my more natural spoken abilities yet, which are still basic and superficial (I still feel like I’m really only a single week into this mission to be honest!) but one good benefit of doing that work is that now I do understand fragments of what others are saying. Spanish and English loan words have been a lot less of a help in doing that than I initially thought they would be from people’s summaries of Tagalog.

What has really been holding me back has been lack of natural social situations in Tagalog – I’m mostly just speaking with waitresses (I eat out all the time, since it’s so cheap here). One friendly aspect of Filipino culture I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen elsewhere is that waiters and waitresses actually sit down with you as they take your order and make chit chat for a few minutes. This means I don’t even have to try so hard to find conversation opportunities!

Although, one unique aspect of White Beach in particular is the large number of ladyboy waitresses. To be honest, I have only spoken English with them and hide the title of my Tagalog book when they sit down near me – they are enthusiastic enough to spend time with me as it is (I haven’t seen any other 20-40 year old single white guys since I got here – being perhaps the most eligible bachelor on the beach is starting to give me a headache!), and I don’t want to motivate them any more! Don’t get me wrong, they’re very nice and fun to talk to, but can get a little too friendly at times (talking way too much about if I’ve got a girlfriend and the fact that they don’t have a boyfriend right now) for my taste!

Usually I like to encourage people to use every opportunity possible to practise the language, but in this one case I’m making an exception. I want to be as uninteresting as possible

Anyway, a real social situation would be to hang out with people consistently for an evening, so that’s what I’m hoping to do this weekend with Manila tourists. Such social interactions always give my language much more context to help me progress faster.

One month left and clues for my next language mission

In four weeks I’ll be back in Manila for a few days and hopefully ready to consistently and spontaneously converse in Tagalog (and record a video to show it). I have a stable environment for the next weeks to do that in and I’m progressing at the speed that I like.

I’m confident that I can do it

I’ll definitely need this relaxing environment for the next weeks considering the fact that I’ll be in major cities for most of this year. Rather than announce the next mission directly, I’m going to be giving a clue in the Monday e-mails starting with the next one. These will not be linguistic clues (language families or grammar points), but common sense and general knowledge about the next language! It’s going to be a fun surprise

Sign up to the e-mail list on the right of the site to get those clues starting Monday, and see if you can guess it right before I officially announce it! (Please don’t write your guesses in comments, as I won’t reply to that part).

As always, your thoughts on my first weeks and progress in Tagalog are appreciated in the comments below! And if you aren’t being chatted up by ladyboys, what’s your excuse for not using your language as soon as possible?
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First weeks in the Philippines & video tour of my beach cottage is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Where are all the language tourists?

Benny — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:39:04 +0000

In this day and age travel is so easy and cheap that taking a “gap year” is becoming more and more commonplace.

Travel before settling down into your job or even before going to college is something a large number of Europeans and Australians have been doing for well over a decade. I’m glad to see that North Americans are starting to do this more regularly too.

And what people do during this extended travel period is quite impressive; many of them get to do incredible things they have never done before – for example I just went scuba diving for the first time this week, and I can tell you if you have never gone that it really opens your eyes to a whole new world, and makes you so aware of your body in different ways.

As well as this, people take photos to inspire others, eat local foods, learn local dances, and make many international friends. Most of these will be with other travellers (that’s to be expected due to more common ground), but occasionally they will indeed make a real connection with (beyond ordering food off…) some locals.

English is pretty widespread, so if you don’t mind restricting yourself to the university educated or those that work in the tourist industry, then you can indeed get by fine just with English, and you can even make lifelong and deep friendships with those locals.

Nothing wrong with being a tourist

Luckily, I meet many foreigners who do speak the local language. These are usually expats, who didn’t follow the typical route of protecting themselves in an English speaking bubble. As expected, they have no “language talent” – they just realised that if they are going to be in the country that long, not learning the language is going to limit them too much and necessity becomes their fuel to learn it.

Since I don’t live permanently in a country and thus can’t quite call myself an “expat”, unlike some travellers, I have no qualms with relating to use of the word “tourist”.

I’m touring, and I’m living a non-local lifestyle in many things I do (such as being vegetarian), and staying in temporary accommodation rather than getting a long-term lease. If I know I’m definitely leaving, even if it’s not for 3 months, I still consider myself a “tourist”, even if my lifestyle is not quite what you would consider of a typical tourist.

I’m not one for site-seeing for example (which is an excellent way to get to know a place, I just am not so interested in architecture and museums/history), but I usually do that at the end of my stay.

Backpackers are tourists too, even if they don’t like the lack of romanticism and adventure associated with the word. I find the whole thing quite ironic that so many will constantly ask for the “non touristy” destinations on travel forums (frequented almost entirely by other tourists).

If these same people ended up in a 20 person village with no running water, then they’d quickly change their mind. The world is becoming developed and tourism is part of that development. Even small “non touristy” towns have resources to accommodate tourists. It’s an important industry that helps the economy of the local country when done right. The tourists (both backpackers and resort stayers) before me have paved the path to make access to places as a foreigner that much easier, and I’m eternally grateful for that, even if that path happens to be “beaten”.

But there has been something that has constantly annoyed me in 8 years on the road:

Why aren’t there other language tourists??

So, accepting that we are all tourists and interested in different things (so if you travel for scenery or food and I don’t, that’s quite alright!) what has constantly confused me is why there aren’t other language tourists?

Every time I meet someone and tell them what I’m doing, they’re always so amazed at the idea. And in almost a decade travelling, I’ve never actually met someone else who is definitely travelling (so they know the investment they make is not one for speaking the language for their entire life every day) and also focused on speaking with locals. Why is that?

Perhaps I’m simply missing them just barely, but I usually start my time in a country in a more typically tourist-like situation (so I’m still in hotels in the Philippines and will hopefully have an apartment from next week), so I meet plenty of other travellers in each country, just before I transition to the time where I’m simply not being in situations where I’d meet them at all (i.e. spending time with people who wouldn’t use English socially).

I’m sorry but to me it just doesn’t seem like that clever or unique an idea to be a tourist and to have “get to know locals” as the main priority in your travel criteria.

If you think you can do this only using English in any non-restricted way in countries where English is not an official language or not in very developed countries like those in Northern Europe, then I would have to kindly ask you to take your head out of your ass.

Yes, you can make great friends with the well educated, or those whose job it is to speak English, but after that you can’t talk with most people normally in terms of getting to know them. Sorry but them knowing how to count to 100 so they can sell you a t-shirt (to some people, this will count as the vast majority speaking “some English”) doesn’t count in terms of you really trying to get to know them.

Even here in the Philippines I got a regional bus and ended up sitting next to a lady who was transporting chickens (do I get my non-tourist badge for doing this? Oh goody(!)) Since I was struggling so much with my Tagalog I tried to use some English with her and she just gave me a blank face. Conversing was only possible with my very limited (but imaginative) language skills and body language. And this is in a country where English has official status!

And here come the excuses…

Actually I know the answer to the question, but I’m still asking it in the hope that others might start thinking more about it to realise the fallacies.

The real reason there are very few language tourists is because of excuses. Plenty of people would love to do it, but (while or before they are travelling) they have no time, no money, the “language gene” located a few strands up the 14th chromosome (or whatever) is missing for them (ignoring the fact that they already clearly speak a language so this is quite ridiculous), only a “select few” like me are lucky enough to be able to do it (yes, just me… and over a billion others who genuinely speak more than one language). Sorry if that’s not the case in your country, but places like India with people who speak 5 languages being almost the norm show that wealth and travel really have little to do with it.

Or maybe you’re too old? I was also too old when I started – it’s a good thing I ignored that excuse.

Or maybe you’ll only be in the country for a few weeks, so it’s not worth the effort. The only real “effort” I have in my travels is trying to convince other people of how easy this process of learning a language really is when you do it right. Grab a cheap phrasebook. Learn off the phrases and use them. It will be hard the first time and not so hard the second time. You can even learn enough to get by pretty well in just one weekend or on the flight over.

Maybe you don’t like hearing that the reason you aren’t speaking your language is actually due to empty excuses rather than some decision about you cast by destiny at the beginning of time. Well tough cookie. The purpose of this blog isn’t to show off my travel stories; I want to slap some sense into people until they learn languages.

As I said at the start, if you are a tourist with other goals, then great. I’m not interested in attacking people who are simply interested in a holiday or a cultural experience that involves things you do, rather than getting to know locals with little restrictions. But if you are interested, then it’s time to realise what is really holding you back.

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The day when I meet enough travellers (as well as more expats than the current small number I’m meeting) who say “Cool! Me too!” rather than “Wow, you’re so amazing!” will be a great day indeed.

Of course, I’ll have lots of encouragement and advice to try to point people in that direction – I’ve got lots of goals on this site; selling the Language Hacking Guide on the side supports me as I learn my own languages and helps me save up for more expensive future immersion experiences like to learn Japanese and Russian some day (since I’d like to do them in the capitals), but what I’d really like to do with this site and the increasing readership is simple:

I want to change the world.

I want as many people as possible to communicate confidently in other languages, no matter what their background is, and I want everyone to realise that (even if school convinced you otherwise) everyone, including you, can learn other languages in a lot less time and effort than you might think.

And it’s working; I’m starting to get more and more e-mails from people who are confirming that (surprise surprise) actually trying to speak actually works. Hopefully you’ll be sending me yours soon

Looking forward to meeting more language tourists some time soon!

Let me know what you think about this in the comments or share this post with your friends on Facebook.
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Where are all the language tourists? is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!