My mother flew to meet my father in Europe for their honeymoon about 26 years ago. He was already there serving with the Canadian army and had a free plane ticket, either back to Canada, or to Europe. They chose the latter. While there, they decided they would return in 25 years for their anniversary. Although we are late, my parents bought my family five plane tickets to Italy for this coming June. It will be the first time travelling to Europe, for myself and my siblings, where we will be travelling Italy for 3 weeks. This will be a unique experience for my family as we are all grown up (my younger sister will be 17) and soon may have responsibilities, jobs, or significant others that would affect such a trip. We rarely have the opportunity to travel together, let alone for three weeks, but the opportunity has come and we are taking it this year.
Although I am no expert in any language other than English (I would say I am almost fluent in French), I love to learn languages. I see them as windows into other cultures, and I love to experience how other cultures express their feelings orally, through literature, and through music. I have thought about learning Italian before, but I have never acted on the thought, so when my family decided to take this trip, I decided that there would be no better time to learn this beautiful language.
I studied a bit one day in October, writing down vocabulary from YouTube videos, but between school and work, learning Italian for a trip 8 months away dropped to the bottom of my priority list. The week after the semester ended, though, I downloaded a free version of Duolingo and set myself a daily goal that lasted a week. I am proud to say that I have not missed my daily practice since, and have continued to renew the challenge each week (in fact, Christmas Day was the day I studied the most by far). I did not want to lose my momentum entering in to the new semester, so I was glad when this free inquiry project was assigned. During the coming semester I will continue to improve my Italian so that I can translate for my family while we are travelling Italy. I hope you enjoy following my journey of learning Italian!
Until next time,
Kiya
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