Becoming a Good Simple Notebook

"If you can learn to speak one language well, than you can certainly learn to speak one or more other languages."

Adapting to a new place that speaks another language is always quite the experience. When I moved to Turkey in 2009, I was 14 and I was moving from a town of 88,000 to a mega-city of 18 million. I remember being nervous about using public transport on my own for the first time and about attending a new school that was an hour away from where I lived. There were new smells in the city, new sounds that were loud and different, but most nerve-racking of all, there was a new language spoken and I didn't know it.

Language is such a unique thing. It is the strongest glue that holds one culture together, and yet the strongest barrier that keeps two cultures apart. I have had many experiences already in the week and a half in which I've been able to try and communicate with other people who don't speak English. Of course, I have failed many times and we couldn't understand each other, but a few times it has worked. Last week I went to an electronics store and tried to ask for an adapter. I acted out plugging in something to the wall and the man led me to the area that had extension chords, but no adapters. On Tuesday, I went into a different store again asking for the same thing, and this time using my broken Korean I said, "America. Korea." and he understood. I bought two.

It's the little language victories that keep me going as I adjust to a new place. Acting out an adapter and buying one. Ordering lunch in a foreign language on my own. Finding my Accounting class and being the only native English speaker in it. Discovering a campus Christian prayer room by following signs. Asking a lady on the road where a market nearby was and understanding her gestures - ("Big market where?") Asking for the price of different foods and then buying bananas from a street vendor.

As I progress in my Korean day by day, I must remind myself that I CAN learn Korean. I have learned English and Turkish and I know that if I continue to study and practice, I will be able to learn Korean as well. As everyone knows, "It is good to dream, but it is better to dream and work," "Faith is mighty, but faith with action is mightier," and also "Desiring is helpful, but desiring and work is INVINCIBLE." I will continue dreaming and desiring and having faith that someday I will speak Korean fluently, and I will continue working at it through study and practice. (And someday my dream of becoming a Good Simple Notebook may come true..!) Though my Korean speaking skills are fairly poor, I can only hope that it makes people SMILE and that it sounds as CUTE as these English translations do: