The Seoul Diaries: Faith’s Language Corner (언어 코너)

Hello or “안녕하세요!” It’s Faith 선생님 and today I will be reviewing some key phrases, terms, and slang words that I have picked up since being in South Korea. Knowing basic Hangul and the pronunciation of the letters will come in handy a lot, but I will try writing the romanization for the phrases. I…

The Best Way to Learn a Language

Ha! Gotcha! This may be a little bit of clickbait, but I definitely learned a lot from my parents coming to visit Bilbao for a week. And, don’t worry, I will share some of the things that I learned at the end of the article. For their spring break, my parents decided to come to…

Why I’m learning Chinese

On my first leg of the journey from Cleveland, Ohio to Harbin, China, I sat next to a man from Brooklyn who would not stop complaining about everything: the minor delay in take-off, the noise the plane engine made, how much he hated flying, the disrespectful people in New York City, etc., etc. “I actually…

The Glamorous Parisian Life of Food Poisoning and Wet Paint

It’s been about a month and mom said I haven’t blogged, so I’ll see what all I can remember from the past few weeks! About 3 weeks ago, I headed off to London to meet my friend from Ole Miss studying in Edinburgh, Scotland. My flight was continuously delayed, but I finally arrived there around…

EAT (pastries), PRAY (for more pastries), LOVE (those pastries)

It’s three weeks into my study abroad experience in Angers, and I can finally say I’ve nestled quite cozily into my new environment. I’ve taken to an all-black wardrobe, started smoking a pack of cigarettes for petit-déjeuner, and have finally reached fluency. Actually none of that is true, but I have spent the last few…

France: Parade Stalking

So, yesterday I went to an Occitan Carnival festival…. thing. It was… well, it wasn’t what I expected, but that’s partially because I didn’t have all the info about said Occitan festival, and it’s possible that I jumped the gun a little. Let me start off with something of an explanation: A large part of…

Morocco: Volunteering

Today was my second day of volunteering here in Rabat, and I’ve gotta say, volunteering here in Morocco is an experience vastly different from volunteering back home. First of all, the concept of orientation doesn’t really exist here. When we first arrived in Morocco, all of us kids indicated to Ouafaa, our program assistant/getstuffdone lady,…

Morocco: My Head Just Exploded

Yes, that is what you think it is. No, your eyes are not deceiving you. I found and you’d best believe I purchased Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince translated into Arabic today. I went into the French/Arabic bookstore next door to our study center today to buy a Moroccan novel I have to read…

Morocco: The End of the Beginning

Today was our last day of intensive Darija class. Tomorrow we’ll have our exam and then Wednesday we start our regular schedules for the rest of the semester. We had 8 days of class total, and I took 24 full pages of notes. We went from learning the simplest of phrases, like “Hello, my name…

Morocco: جابت الدجاجة من التلّاجة

Jaabat ad-jaaja min at-tllaaja. Jaabat ad-jaaja min at-tllaaja. Jaabat ad-jaaja min at-tllaaja. Jaabat ad-jaaja min at-tllaaja. Transliterated above for your viewing pleasure is the phrase that has been stuck in my head all dang day. I wish I could say it’s from a song or a poem or the like, but the truth is, it’s…