Boring Daily Stuffs

Es difícil. Yo soy vietnamita y había vivido en Vietnam toda mi vida antes de irme a España. Llegué a Barcelona en octubre de 2018. Después llevé ocho o nueve meses aprendiendo español en una escuela fundada por unos profesores rusos, y casi otros once meses hablándolo. A partir de mi lengua materna, hablo inglés y pensaba que me iba a ayudar a aprender el español más rápido. 

Pues, sí y no.

Primero, déjame contarte porque me decidí a coger un curso de español. Tengo un amigo muy cercano (ahora ya es mi marido) que es español. Bueno, técnicamente él es catalán pero su nacionalidad sigue siendo española. Habla dos idiomas: el español y el catalán... ah y el inglés también, pues será tres :). ¿Ahora me vas a preguntar porque aprendí el español en vez del catalán? Muy simple, porque hay más hablantes españoles que catalanes. Entonces, justo dos días después de llegar a España, me fui a la escuela para empezar mi primer clase. 

La verdad es que antes de venir, había tomado unas lecciones de español en Duolingo. Estoy segura de que ya sabes la aplicación, si no búscala en Google, primera línea y la verás. Por eso, ya había sabido unas palabras básicas para no sentirme tan estúpida. Sin embargo, era otro mundo obviamente. Una cosa que me di cuenta era que la gente aquí habla muy rápido. Al principio, yo usaba mucho el inglés y tenía suerte que la profesora también me entendía. Otra cosa era que hay muchos parecidos entre el inglés y el español, y eso me ayudaba mucho. 

Hasta un punto que no lo hizo más. 

En mi idioma, no tenemos sustantivos masculinos ni femeninos. Lo mismo es el inglés. Por lo tanto, hasta que llevo casi un año y medio practicando el español cada día, me ha equivocado entre sustantivos masculinos y femeninos constantemente. Lo que hago siempre será arreglarme instantáneamente de “seguro” a “segura”, o simplemente “o” a “a”. Quizá a la gente lo encuentra bastante graciosa, pero eso ha sido mi manera de aprender. 

Además, en vietnamita, tampoco cambiamos los verbos. Lo que ves será lo que es. Con el español, las cosas van muy diferentes. Hay que cambiar el verbo por cada sujeto y por cada tiempo. Y hay un montón de tiempos en este idioma. Solía escribir todas las conjugaciones de los verbos en una libreta o en unos trozos de papeles que se los pegaba a la pared de mi piso. 

Finalmente, el uso de los pronombres en español es completamente opuesto al vietnamita o el inglés. En lugar de ponerlos después del verbo, se los pone enfrente del sujeto normalmente (aparte de unos casos especiales). No sé cuantas veces tenía que recordarme de las reglas antes de intentar construir una frase completa.

Me acabé el curso con el nivel B1, lo cual significa que me quedaba al menos un curso más para poder obtener un nivel de español decente. Sin embargo, ya sabes, cosas que pasan. Ahora, he tratado de practicar el español diariamente, y me di cuenta de que blogging también es una de las formas de conseguirlo. 

Entonces, aquí estoy. 

Dear friend, let me tell you something...

I have been listening to a really great song from one of my favorite singers of all time. Her name is IU, a 28-years-old singer and her music are awesome. At the time of this post, the MV down below has just been released. You can watch it here or look it up on Youtube. 

Don’t ask me since when I knew her because I don’t remember, probably not long after I got to know about Kpop, which means maybe 7 or 8 years ago. Also, I got the chance to watch her evolve over time and one could realize how mature she has become, professionally as a singer, songwriter and actress as well as individually as a person. Well, to be honest I don’t really know her apart from what the media writes about her, but I listen to her music and that is something I can judge. Her music is distinct, with her own colors and styles that she has built up over time. To me, she is bold in her own way and doesn’t mind saying her own thoughts through songs. 

So why am I talking about her now? 

As I have mentioned before, I have been listening to the song for a few days. At first, I wasn’t really impressed because it wasn’t what I had expected, or I should say it wasn’t up to my expectation. But I couldn’t be more wrong. The song has stuck in my mind. So I looked up the meaning of the song because obviously, I don’t know Korean... yet. Some said that she wrote about her late friends who have died recently and that she wished to meet them again, even in her worst dreams. Others say it’s about the breakup between lovers... I’d like to believe it to be the former one. 

So that leads to my thoughts now: what is FRIENDSHIP? 

You know what, like many people out there I used to have lots of friends: from schools, university, at work... The more I grow up, the more I have realized that the amount of friends has reduced over each stage of my life. Now, I mostly talk to one or two close friends of mine. 

Do you know why? 

Well there are lots of reasons but when I came to think of it, mostly because the current-me at each stage had changed compared to the previous version of me.

When I was young, I was very shy and a pure introvert at heart. I was afraid of talking to strangers and other kids, especially those who were taller than me, which means most of the kids at my school because I was super small. I didn’t talk much and obviously I didn’t want anything close to being the center of attention. When I was a little bit older, the shyness had converted into insecurities. I didn’t have much self-confidence because I thought I wasn’t good at anything. So it was hard for me to make friends. I had friends though, in secondary school. I was a friend with the most popular girl at school. She was very pretty so lots of boys liked her. During that time, I was sitting close to her and we became friends. There was nothing wrong with that friendship. I had funned. But I was easily influenced by others. I don’t remember lots of things that happened in my teenagerhood but I remembered that I stopped being her friend when somebody told me that I was just following her. 

When I grew up a little more, I thought I had gotten smarter and wiser, but things kept happening made me wonder... I had a friend of seventeen-years who I stopped being friends with. Another friend whom I thought I admired I lot also wasn’t friend any longer. So what have been the reasons? 

You know what my friend? I have realized that I wasn’t loving myself enough. I was afraid of doing something wrong to people because I didn’t want to make them upset or hurt their feelings. I kept avoiding conflicts because I couldn’t live with it and it stressed me out. So even when people hurt my feelings, I was fine with that. I let things go because I thought it was the best way. I let them do whatever they wanted to do with me because according to them it was the best for me, but more than that, it made them feel good about themselves as well.

I wasn’t really happy. I pleased people but not myself, and it took me almost half of my life to learn that. But better later than never. 

Now I have great friends whom I can talk to. Friends who accept me as who I am, both good and bad things, as much as I would do for them. I’m actually grateful for that, and what I would love to do more from now on is to learn to reflect on things that happened in my life rather than just passing by.

A note for the last year of my 20s.

Sooo sorry for answering this late. I haven't got on tumblr for ages. Anyway, still better than no anwsering at all right? 

I woke up very early in the morning at 5:am. Having slept for only 3 hours, my head was spinning around like a pinpoint ball. Despite this, I managed to pack my bags and luggage for the trip and luckily, I had packed everything I could find including ramen, which I really liked just in case and then I was good to go. At the time waiting for my driver to come to pick me up, I felt empty, not excited or even nervous. It was a very calm feeling mixing up with my sleeplessness. I got in this stage of mind sometime when I didn't have enough sleep. Some energizing activities would help lift my up then. As the time I reached the airport, it was almost 8:am and because it was a little late, I rushed to the check-in counter for the before-flight-procedures. It took me a while to find the gathering place where I found my 1-year-older friend Nghia and the other two members of our team among which one of them I had never been able to meet before. So it was quite awkward at the beginning, but then I pulled it through 'cause I'm an easy-going person judging from my own perspective, so everything was ok then. It was the first time walking in HCMC International airport, so it was a little bit surprising to see the place. We were having a small chat with each other waiting for the check-in session to come and I felt really great. Every anxiety, every regret that I had before the trip had gone immediately, and my exciting mood came up to my surprise. 

It was a 4-hour-flight, the longest one that I got since the flight to Singapore many years ago. Most of the time I spent on the plane was sleeping and sleeping, maybe eating also ^^. The food wasn't too bad for me, but it wasn't good either. I still enjoyed the coffee at the very end anyway. 

The weather was extremely cold as expected, but it wasn't like anything I had been through before. 9 degree was too much for me to handle, and thanks to Nghia's hoodie which was given to me when I couldn't unlock my luggage to take mine, I was ok on the walk from the airport to the taxi waiting station and in the taxi as well. However, the dizziness caught me when I was sitting in the taxi, probably because of the long hours of flying and the sudden struck of the weather on me. Anyway, I recovered when I got to the hotel and on the way to the meeting venue. Walking make me feel better and I could be able to take photos of everything that I saw with my bare eyes to make sure that I could have something to look back and to share with my friends when coming back to Vietnam. 

It was a very typical foreign-style meeting to me: there was a speech, food, another speech and then food again, which I really enjoyed 'cause hungriness would kill our ears and our brains easily. We were introduced to the campus of Hult Business University (I guessed). I figured out it was a pretty small place with plenty of small rooms named after various popular locations around the world like London, Sydney or as ours - Paris.

After the meeting, we walked back to the hotel, but then decided to have something to eat so a restaurant called Memory was picked on the way. The cold wind stopped immediately as we entered the restaurant. We found our way up stair just to find out that there were only two couple tables left therefore we splitted into two each. Chinese food was definitely not my favorites after all because it had too much oil and too little salt, that was why I couldn't have much of it. We left the place at almost 11:pm, exhausted as hell. I went to bed immediately after bath, something that I rarely did in my entirely life. 3 hours later, I woke up to prepare for our presentation which sadly hadn't been completed yet. The later hours were filled with vague discussion and silence as we did our tasks, and then morning hit us in our face. What a night I thought.  

When we reached the venue, it was 6 in the morning. The weather was wet and cold, and I felt super calm which I couldn't explain why. I would not dig too deep into the presentation that morning, but it was good to me in general. There was a point when we didn't practice thoroughly enough and it ended up with me forgetting the simple task I was given. What a shame. When we moved to the Water house - some kind of old hall of Chinese people I wasn't so sure about which was also the venue for the final round, even though I didn't have the confidence that we would have won, my heart still skipped a beat when the final team was announced. We didn't make it. I felt bad, not for myself but for my friend who I knew for sure that he wanted this so badly. I was sorry for not getting to the next round at least but to me I had had great time and I hoped the others did feel the same. 

After the dinner party, we went back to the hotel, exhausted. I couldn't find my energy thus I threw myself into bed right after having shower, falling asleep almost immediately. There was no dreaming. A great sign.

The next day, I woke up, feeling my legs aching to my bones. But my roommate and I still decided to go for a walk around the hotel before leaving Shanghai. We walked across the streets, stopped by a couple of stores, before arriving at the largest bookstore I had ever seen in my entire life. There was 7 floors fulled of books, but surprisingly almost no English books were found which was quite weird to me. When we headed back to the hotel, it was 12 already and we needed to return the rooms before then, lucky for us.