1. French – I recently enrolled in basic French classes with Arol at Alliance Francais. This course marks my “return to the classroom” after many years, although now I get to be a student again. (I miss teaching terribly but that’s another story for another day). ^_^
I find French a little difficult compared to the others I previously studied (Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian), as I think the pronunciation is not very consistent. Also, I have not quite gotten my head around not pronouncing certain letters in a word. For example, with “le mot”, you do not enunciate the T at the end. The plural form “les mots” sounds exactly the same as the singular to my untrained ear. Nosebleed moment, huh?
Well, I am sure there are rules about that, and being this early in the course, I haven’t encountered them yet.
Our classes are going great and I am enjoying so far. I can’t help but compare things like the language itself, even the teaching style. It’s different, but in a great way. I want to keep enrolling and see how far I can go. I hope I do make it till the end, just like Japanese — the only foreign language course I finished from basic to intermediate to advanced to teacher training.
2. Surfing – I never learned how to properly surf. I still haven’t forgotten the surfing lesson disaster last year and I am still very much motivated. I just might take Kay’s advice and spend an entire week in La Union, just studying surfing. Wow, the beach for an entire week! Gives me chills just thinking about it.
3. Violin – this goes a loooong way back. Maybe 6 or 7 years. One of my colleagues was good at it and a friend was taught by the maestro Levi Celerio himself. Back then, I remembered salivating over the violins on display at the music store in Park Square every time I pass by. Now I want to seriously study it. I know it might be difficult, especially at my age, since virtuosos usually start playing as soon as they come out of the womb. Well, I don’t plan on joining the Philharmonic anyway. I just want to be a decent violinist 🙂
Regrettably, I will have to spend less time on my Italian self study, as it is not a good idea to study it together with another foreign language. Maybe I will pick it up again when I get to French B1 — whenever that happens!
