I can no longer speak well.
After eleven months of broken English, “Where is the
bathroom? Bathroom…where?”, “Me…move this?”, improve sign
language, and simplifying every word to communicate with locals, I have
forgotten how to speak. I have a college education; one of my minors is in
communication for goodness sake. A few of my friends back home can attest, when
talking on Skype I struggle with the simplest words. Attempting to have an
intellectual conversation, ha, good luck. Not only have I forgotten every ‘big
word’ I once knew, I am completely out of the loop. We don’t exactly what
television and internet is so limited that I only can scan CNN.com; which is
hard because there have been a lot of major events that have happened since I
left in July 2010.
I sit here and smile. I used to highly value my education,
my vocabulary, being up to date on current events and political issues. It’s
not like I even knew that much before, but now I really don’t. Now, while
working out on an organic farm in the jungle of Malaysia, that stuff does NOT
matter. Watching monkey’s cross the street in front of your house, leeches
dance and chase you, petting cows that are sitting on the side of the road,
looking at neon colored bugs and creatures, playing with your pet baby
chickens, and just enjoying the creation in front of me, now that is what I
value. It’s seeing the beauty of nature and soaking it in that matters right
now. Don’t get me wrong, when I get home I will probably promptly catch up on
world news, sit in on a college lecture for the heck of it, and hang out and listen
to my dad talk as he uses words that many of my old professors probably do not
even know the meaning of; but right now, broken English is working for me.
There isn’t much of a point to this blog. I guess word to
the wise for those who are thinking of going on the race, prepare to lose some
English skills as you encounter countless languages. The languages I have
encountered and attempted to speak some on this race:
Spanish, Creole, Romanian, Moldovan, Afrikaans, Chichewa,
Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Filipino, Thai, Malay, Benglai and probably some more
I cannot think of right now.
I kindly ask for patience for my inability to speak well
when I return home. 🙂
p.s. you don’t even want to know how many times I had to use
spell check on this blog. Haha
