Love of my life
I think I've always been in love with foreign languages.
When I was a child, I remember I used to think that in junior high I was gonna study French just as my mum did and I couldn't wait, I really loved the idea...but then my love for French, which I'm sure is still somewhere inside my head, was replaced by my absolute worshipping for English...I started studying English when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I don't remember exactly when, but I loved it... I had to put up a fight with junior high teachers cause at the time English wasn't compulsory and they only taught French, and finally my friends and I managed to have English classes....quite bad classes, exception made for the first year, I didn't really learn anything useful, but aty least I could read and listen to English every week..and then I turned 14, I had to choose high school and of course I went for language school, as I had planned when I was 11...and that was really the best decision of my life...I've made many wrong choices in my life, but never with school, I've just started figuring out what I wanna do in my life, but one thing never changed: whatever I'm gonna do, I want foreign languages and English in particular to be part of it.
High school was also the time when my love for English turned into actual worshipping: when I was 17, I spent with my class a week in Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK.... and that's the moment when I realized what a beautiful language English is...before it was only a matter of studying and getting good marks, after that I wanted badly to learn it better, to speak it better, to write it better... I needed that sooo badly...I didn't even know why...
And then music came into the picture.
You see, my friends of the time didn't listen to much music...but one day, they made me listen to the only song they loved by a band they didn't like very much...the song name was "In the end" and the band was Linkin Park... and that song changed my life...
Ok, let me tell you the whole story...they made me listen to the song in 2002, I fell for it, listened to it for a very long time and then kinda forgot about that...that's how I work, if I love a band, I listen to it at first, then let it go, then listen to it again after a while and I'm hooked....and that's what happened with Linkin Park...in 2004 I was spending my summer in Croatia and there was this German guy I had a crush on...I saw him wearing a Metallica t-shirt and at the time, the closest thing to Metallica I had on my mp3 player were Linkin Park, so I started listening to their songs over and over again...I never had a chance to talk to that guy, but it's thanks to him if I fell in love with Linkin Park and I started to take an interest in that kind of music....then came Metallica, Green Day, Good Charlotte, A7X, Evanescence, Offspring, Papa Roach, Bullet for my Valentine, HIM, Madina Lake, Sum 41, Simple Plan and many, many others...and English was the only way I could keep myself updated about what they were doing...and above all, it was the onyl way I could really understand the songs, cause I think you haven't really listened to a song if you haven't understood its lyrics.... let's take "Numb" by Linkin Park..that song changed my life, and even though musically I think it's amazing, it's what is said that really struck me.... actually, I think much of my English vocabulary comes from songs...
Moving on...after high school, there was uni...once again, foreign languages, no doubts about that... and I also managed, during my uni career, to make one of my biggest dreams come true: when I was 20/21, I spent one whole year in England, in Leeds, close to my beloved Harrogate...Leeds is an amazing place and I had the time of my life there...not only because England is an amazing place (especially if you love music), but also because I met so many nice people there...and I spoke English all the time...I know it sounds crazy, but even though I know my English is far from perfect, there's nothing I love more than using it...all the time...I even speak to myself in English sometimes... I actually like the fact that I have a way of expressing my thoughts even when my parents are around...cause they don't understand it and so it's my little world....and they can't get in..I love my parents, I really love them, but I guess we all need some privacy, and English is the most powerful tool I have in this sense...