How I study

When I tell people that I study 7 languages at once, they always say that they could never do it and ask how I keep myself motivated.
I already told you that I study every language once a week, but what do I actually do? Maybe this could help you with your language studies as well?


First of all, I have a notebook where I fill one page per day. This includes new vocabulary (20 words a day, in Japanese I learn 10 new kanji every week) and, of course, some grammar as well. I have to admit, I usually have troubles finding some grammar to study for English or Swedish for example, because I already know how to use the language. I don't really need much more but the practice, but this is part of my everyday life, in every language. So, what exactly do I do?

1) Reading
Reading is, in most cases, the easiest part of learning a new language. You can take your time, work your way through every word, until you understand the meaning of a sentence. I have to admit, it's a bit more difficult with Japanese, because you don't only know the words, but also the Kanji belonging to them. Since I always set my first goal for reading, I'm mainly studying Kanji at the moment, without knowing how to pronounce them in most cases. My excuse: Depending of what way they're used in, they're always pronounced differently. Ways to practise your reading comprehension are:
- reading a book
- reading blog entries
- setting your phone/computer/facebook to the language you're learning
- reading song lyrics
- reading example sentences including the words you've just learned
- scanning shampoo bootles/food packages/etc for the language you're learning: they might have the ingredients printed onto it
- finding a chat partner online (before you start writing in that language, you could continue in your own language and ask that person to reply in his)

2) Writing
Writing is usually the next step I take. You don't need a conversational partner for these two kinds of practice, which is useful if you need to find a way into the new language. If I would actually try to speak with a Finnish person, or maybe just listen, I probably wouldn't understand a word. It's hard to analyse what is being said, since the person doesn't know what speed you work in. Some people might argue this, but working with the written word is the easiest way to approach a language for me. Of course, it's always important not to stay in one area, but work with all four of them. You can practise your writing skills by:
- copying texts you've read
- writing with your chat partner
- giving yourself tasks for writing (in an essay for example, or a review)
- having a blog in that language
- doing grammar exercises (and writing the solutions down in a whole sentence!)

3) Listening
Listening is the third step I approach. Before speaking yourself, you need to know how a word sounds, and it's easier to try and understand unknown words from the context, instead of getting stuck while speaking because you have a lack of vocabulary. This counts for reading as well, of course! I often study unknown words from books I'm reading as new vocabulary. Since you already know what words look like, you can keep your eyes open for words and sentence structures that seem familiar to you. You can do this while:
- watching a film (maybe a film you already know to start with)
- watching interviews or TV shows (choose a topic you're actually interested in)
- listening to native speakers (e.g. via skype or when you recognise them in public transport)
- listening to songs 
- listening to audiobooks
- listening to the radio 

4) Speaking
Speaking is what we're actually aiming at, isn't it? Being able to participate in conversations. You don't say "speaking a language" for nothing! Now, ways to practise this are:
- speaking with a native speaker
- repeating sentences you've heard
- reading texts out lout (that's what I do with books)


Now, have fun with learning your language, you all know that I do! It's midnight, so Finnish time for me!

Nahla

So, two weeks went over quite fast! We actually didn't do much at all and stayed at home most of the time, since I was kind of tense the whole time. But, although she is probably taller than our dog Barry, you can still tell that Nahla is still a puppy from the way she acts. So today, since it's our next to last day, I decided to take the camera outside with us one more time. It's probably going to rain tomorrow and I hadn't managed to take any interesting shots of her yet. I'm quite happy with the results though. It was a good decision to shoot in RAW, too.

Although I really like Nahla and I think she likes me too, I'm certain that we're both happy to get back home soon. And I'll definitely meet up with my friend Nele and her Aussie Fly to take more shots of her, too! The past week has been really exhausting, rather nerve-wracking, for me, so I'll treat this as a holiday. I'll keep studying, of course! And book some driving lessons to get through with that as well. Everything is ok! Isn't it?

Challenge accepted

I love challenges! I'm going to start tomorrow!

+ 10 pushups a day!

Agatha Christie - The Pale Horse (English)

Due to my language study plans, I've decided to read more, starting with an English book I bought on a flea market more than three years ago.

I wasn't quite convinced at first, because for me, it's always hard to keep reading at the beginning of the book. Until the tension rises, which it did in this case.

Of course, the tension came together with a murder and - even more importantly - a mystery.
The dying Mrs Davis leaves tells Father Gorman about some names which are important to remember, and then dies. Straight after, Father Gorman is killed on the streets. The detectives didn't really understand why he was killed, but it must have had to do with the names on the list he hid in his shoe. What were those names about? It was certain though, that some of those names were surnames of people who had just died, and people with the remaining surnames kept dying, from natural causes, apparantly. As Mark Easterbrook, our protagonist, hears about this place called the Pale Horse where there were supposed to be witches, he tried to find out more about it. Soon enough, he learns that there is a whole business behind it, and it had to do with the people dying. According to his theory, this guy in Birmingham, Bradley, bet on the lives of people with relatives who wanted them to die, which seems completely legal. Thyrza Grey and the other women of the Pale Horse then put a curse on them to make them become ill. Also, there must be a brain behind it, and since the old pharmasist Osborne had seen someone following Father Gorman right before he was killed who looked like Mr Venables, he was the main suspect - although he had atrophied limbs.
To find out more, Mark and his friend Ginger decided to trick them and look behind what was happening. Mark told Thyrza Grey he wanted Ginger, who played his wife who had disappeared years ago and now suddenly was back, dead and so they have a séance at the Pale Horse, a black magic ceremony. And a while later, Ginger actually becomes ill.
As Mark found out that she was losing hair, his friend Mrs Oliver told him that the previous victims also were losing hair - it wasn't a curse, but a thallium poisoning. D.I. Lejeune, his sergeant and Mark go to Mr Venables house, witness Osborne coming with them. They explain the whole business to Venables just to then turn to Osborne and state that he was the brain behind it, that he was just suspecting Venables to hide that he actually killed Father Gorman and had people go to the victims' houses and place thallium there.

What. a. plot twist. Wow.
I have to admit, I'm a really bad reader so this book actually took me some weeks, although it's not really long. But, despite the fact I'm not really into detective novels, this one was really interesting and provided surprises for the reader. Ginger and Mark decide to marry at the end, but I'm glad it wasn't utterly romantic, because that wouldn't have matched with the rest of the story. I hardly could identify with Mark, to be honest, but I guess most readers just want to get behind what's happening at the Pale Horse if they're reading this book. I might read more novels by Agatha Christie, I actually have another one here!


Now I need to start reading a French book though, ugh. English was so easy, it was wonderful! But I'd like to get to this point with all my languages. So be sure that more reviews will be coming!

How to become Turkish overnight

I remember that, at the beginning of this year, I told myself that I wanted to finally meet my grandpa, because it might be too late if I wait longer.

A lot of things happened and I kind of forgot about this plan.
But I think while studying Turkish with my friend from Istanbul, I remembered about it. And he encouraged me to find my grandfather.

I asked my mum if she had his number or address, she had nothing like that, she didn't even have her half-siblings' contact details. I even asked my dad and he didn't have anything.

So the last thing I thought I could do was to publish a post on the "Spotted" Facebook page of the shopping centre of the town my grandfather used to live in. I knew he wasn't there anymore, though. The page only had 500 likes, I just asked people if they knew him or his children and I didn't expect anything to happen. I almost decided to forget about it.

Then, the admin of the page messaged me, someone knew my grandfather and wanted to help me. He told me her name and I messaged her.
So apparantly, the friend of sister-in-law of my grandfather's ex daughter-in-law had liked my post, so it kind of came through to her (my grandfather's ex daughter-in-law) and she told me that my grandfather was ill and lived in Istanbul, but came to Germany every now and then to get treatment.

She gave me my aunts' number.

My aunt, who had banned her father out of her life, just like my mum did. My aunt who had married a Turkish man and was going to go to Istanbul with the whole family. She sent me photos, told me about herself and said that I was always welcome at hers and in Istanbul.

I feel so loved. And one more thing:

All these years, I knew that I was partially Turkish and I used to tell that to people. They didn't quite accept it and I always looked at my Turkish friends and their families, knowing I had something like that, but I had nothing to do with it and therefore couldn't even call myself Turkish. At all.
I remember this fight with my ex when he stated that if you don't have a citizenship from a certain country, you're not of the nationality of this country. And I felt offended because I always wanted to be with my Turkish family, I wanted to learn about the culture which was there, somewhere in my roots.

This is my family. And this has just become a big part of me.

52 Week Photography Challenge

I want to improve. I want to challenge myself, which I'm constantly doing, but I'm talking about photography here. I don't have a photogenic pet, but there are other things one can take photos of.
Here are the tasks, interpretation is everything.

1. something old (1 August - 7 August)
2. feet (8 August - 14 August)
3. lips (15 August - 21 August)
4. a baby (22 August - 28 August)
5. night (29 August - 4 September)
6. lifestyle (5 September - 11 September)
7. lyrics (12 September - 18 September)
8. breakfast (19 September - 25 September)
9. black and white (26 September - 2 October)
10. a collection (3 October - 9 October)
11. sadness (10 October - 16 October)
12. shades of white (17 October - 23 October)
13. low angle (24 October - 30 October)
14. tiny (31 October - 6 November)
15. something yellow (7 November - 13 November)
16. bokeh (14 November - 20 November)
17. music (21 November - 27 November)
18. water (28 November - 4 December)
19. your shoes (5 December - 11 December)
20. sunset (12 December - 18 December)
21. holding an object (19 December - 25 December)
22. faceless portrait (26 December - 1 January)
23. jumping (2 January - 8 January)
24. high angle (9 January - 15 January)
25. handwriting (16 January - 22 January)
26. in motion (23 January - 29 January)
27. something red (30 January - 5 February)
28. stone (6 February - 12 February)
29. sweet (13 February - 19 February)
30. a child (20 February - 26 February)
31. a kiss (27 February - 5 March)
32. self-portrait (6 March - 12 March)
33. insects (13 March - 19 March)
34. dress (20 March - 26 March)
35. opposites (27 March - 2 April)
36. macro (3 April - 9 April)
37. long exposure (10 April - 16 April)
38. something blue (17 April - 23 April)
39. travel (24 April - 30 April)
40. flowers (1 May - 7 May)
41. shiny (8 May - 14 May)
42. cold (15 May - 21 May)
43. fruit (22 May - 28 May)
44. something green (29 May - 4 June)
45. silhouette (5 June - 11 June)
46. something pink (12 June - 18 June)
47. from a distance (19 June - 25 June)
48. eyes (26 June - 2 July)
49. landscape (3 July - 9 July)
50. light and dark (10 July - 16 July)
51. mother nature (17 July - 24 July)
52. pets (25 July - 11 July)

Merryweather

Insects are super scary! And that's exactly what I thought when this beast suddenly appeared in my room. I saw it sitting there, and before it could jump at me and eat my face, I quickly placed a glass on it and closed it. There it was, this grasshopper-thing. I googled a bit and found out that it was a female Tettigonia viridissima, a great green bush cricket. But on the website, it said that the females, who are bigger than the males, grow up to 42mm. After I had measured, I knew that my new friend, and I named her Merryweather, was quite a lot bigger with 60mm. So maybe she's some kind of mutant.
So about an hour ago, I released her into our garden. She stayed for a moment, probably so I could take a last photo, then she jumped off and disappeared into the green.
What a majestic creature!