I am so much in love with this language since I started learning it last year. And I wish to practice using it as much as possible whenever I get a chance to. And God has been so kind to offer me so many opportunities to do so in the last few days...
If you run a search on internet about "the best ways to learn a new language", you'll find numerous articles which talk about the importance of being in the company of people who use the language as their native language. Now the challenge for me was - how do I find native Spanish or Latin people to practice the language in India???
Simple - I just went ahead and joined a class, keeping in mind the principle of 'the secret'. If I wish to meet people who speak Spanish, the nature will conspire to send them to me! And this time it worked for me even before I released my wish in the universe...
Out of nowhere I started meeting people who spoke Spanish! The first person whom I bumped into happened to be a very sweet lady from Australia - Tania! Such a great devotee of Guruji who came to Bangalore for staying at ashram for half a year or so! And my dear old Pune friend Rajan, who's now working in Melbourne, asked me to receive her at airport and see if she required any assistance during her stay in India. Now statistically what is the chance that a person from Australia knows even a hint of Spanish? But as I said before, I was destined to meet people speaking Spanish.
And so she knew bit of Spanish because her grandma was from Spain if I recall correctly. And so my first Spanish communication happened in the form of tiny little sentences in SMSs with her. but she had to leave ashram soon to go back to Australia. By then I had completed my first level of Spanish. Although I had bunked a few classes for organizing YES!+ course activities in IBS, I managed to be the topper of the batch in the final examination. And so I decided to join the second level classes this year. And something unbelievable happened last month...
Harshal, one of my dearest AOL friends from Pune, who was in Switzerland for past year or so, offered me the task of receiving his friend from Zurich who was visiting ashram for a month or so. She was invited by Guruji's sister to come and attend the International Women's Conference 2009 happening at the Bangalore ashram and so I promised Harshal that I'll do my best to make her stay here as comfortable as possible. And you can not imagine how delighted I was to learn that Maite was a Spaniard, from Madrid!!! She was the first Spanish native which I came across and so I decided to bother her with whatever little bit of Spanish I had learnt so far. But Oh My God...
It did not take much time for me to realize that the beginner level classroom lessons I had learnt were no good when it came to constructing full sentences in Spanish. I had to at least complete the intermediate level to write and speak fluent Spanish. (It seems beginner level of any language class mostly teaches us simple sentences using present tense and we must climb on to the next levels in order to know how to conjugate verbs in past and future tenses) So as an immediate solution I resorted to the use of online translators to construct sentences while communicating in text with Maite. And she was very generous to bear with all sorts of crappy Spanish sentences I tried to construct while communicating with her. But soon her India trip also came to an end and I was kind of loosing the interest to continue with Spanish...
And on the day I bid a hurried farewell to Maite, I got introduced by her to an angel from Argentina - Marco. Now once more I had a live person, this time from Latin America to practice the language. Not just that, soon I meet more friends from Argentina (around 130 of them had landed in ashram a month ago) and we had a good time last couple of weekends together.
One of the major reasons for learning a new language is to get introduced to a completely new culture followed in some other part of the planet and this is exactly what happened in last few days. Marco happened to be a professional Tango dance teacher and offered to give Tango classes to us on weekends (Tango is a ballroom dance specialty of Argentina). Shashi, one of the students of the 2nd batch of YES!+ at IBS, who is a very enthusiastic cheerful fellow and visits ashram regularly on every Sunday afternoon arranged a get-together at his beautiful duplex house and we had a nice time learning tango steps.
We also had a young Salsa dance teacher from Columbia in the group - Sebastian who offered to teach us Salsa the next time we meet! And the girls in the group were so nice to offer to cook some Argentine food for all the next time we meet. But soon the group had to depart on their further travel in India. So we meet one last time over a good game of football in the fine sand of ashram yagyashala on the Sunday morning and now I am so much looking forward to meet these beautiful pearls of AOL Argentina again in Goa on the coming weekend!And I am sure the chain of surprises will continue and I'll find many more Spanish speaking friends in the days to come!!!
P.S. If you are planning to learn Spanish, use 'the secret' - start immediately, look up for the Spanish classes in your area on internet, visit their offices and select the one you are most comfortable with in terms of faculty, facility, and the fees. Get in touch with me and I can help you with discovering some nice resources available on internet for learning Spanish or any other language like German, French, Italian, Mandarin, etc. For starters, log on to www.livemocha.com and start taking your first lesson of Spanish!!! Believe me... its so much fun to learn a new language... you'll make friends with lot of people from around the planet and learn so many new things about different cultures around the world. Try it and if you find it worth, come back and post a comment here about your experiences. Happy Hacking!!!
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