Becoming Coco

  A nd What it Taught me About Teaching and Learning Second Languages   Playing Fruit Ninja in China I am jealous of people who grew up bi-culturally or learned different languages at a young age. I secretly want to be them because in comparison my background is boring and as an adult it is hard to learn a new language. I feel like I am starting late in the game. I grew up in a typical “English” only American home. My parents are the typical mixture of various Anglo cultures and the most interesting thing I can scrounge up about my family’s background is that my grandmother on my father’s side was half Irish. Unfortunately she had schizophrenia and was never a part of my life, so other than the knowledge that I am a quarter Irish, I have no interesting heritage to speak of. In Elementary school I hated those assignments that said to talk about your family’s heritage because no one in our family can give me any specific answer. We are a little Norwegian, German, S...

I made it! I'm in Beijing airport at an Internet Cafe alone drinking Cappuccino and listening to C-POP. I think that officially makes me a World Traveler. I even took artsy pictures of my coffee with the background blurred to upgrade me to Eccentric World Traveler with a blog, because everyone knows once you start taking pictures of mundane objects in your travels you naturally start a blog about them. I could have an entire blog full of pictures of Failed English. I think I will include those here. On the plane I really wanted to photograph the in-flight television show "Spongebox Squarepants." Unfortunately you are not permitted to use your phone during the flight and a camera would just be rude to others around me. You will just have to imagine the fit of girlish giggles I had to repress at the sight of the intentional typo made by mis-translation. If you ask me the Chinese translation makes more sense, he is rather box-y. View from my window ...