Adult Education (hay quá!)

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I still remember quite vividly my very first day of German class as a college freshman. Having chosen German for no real reason other than the fact that I predicted I might like to spend a significant amount of time hanging out in Berlin, I sat there mortified while my professor patiently went about the initial lesson totally auf Deutsch. There was no way, I surmised, I could stomach 4 semesters—the liberal arts minimum requirement—of this proverbial tossing in the deep end. Only later did I realize that the professor whom I was lucky enough to have been assigned for German 101 is a legendary pedagogist, a polymath with advanced degrees in math and comparative literature, and an overall inspiring guy with a penchant for funny graphic tees. I ended up minoring in German studies, and, on two separate occasions, living briefly in Berlin. Though my German is by no means excellent, I still find myself reverting to it in my head whenever I’m faced with wholly unfamiliar situations as some sort of reflex.

Despite this overwhelmingly positive experience with my first go at seriously undertaking a foreign language, it has taken me a truly embarrassingly long time to get myself to study southern Vietnamese in a formal setting (i’ve lived in Saigon for about 18 months). But better late than never, as they say. So for now it’s back to square one, aside from the vocabulary on food and drink, tennis, and home plant care I’ve accrued thus far. I’m trying to temper my expectations, but my most pressing goal is to get to the level where I can practice in daily life and, perhaps more ambitiously, tell the ladies running my favorite rice porridge spot a little more about myself.

We’ll see how it goes.