Bilingual Thoughts
How many languages do you speak? I mean fluently... that is. It is nothing to bost about these days but I speak two and have been studying for third..
I speak Korean and English. Back in the days (long long time ago) when I went to middle school and high school in the States, i used to have my thoughts in English. I guess that is natural when you live in an English speaking country and is exposed to everything English minus your immediate family.
Nowadays, even though I love to consume English contents, I do not have that many chances to speak English. I do watch Netflix in English without the subtitles and I do love reading books in English but as for speaking... there just aren't that many options.
So I find myself rusty sometimes. The incredible thing is that, whenever I travel or interact with group of English speaking people for over certain amount of time, I can feel my wheels turning and getting better at speaking within a very short amount of time. Human brain is amazing!! It is like there is a dormant part part of me that awakens sometimes.
Last Friday, my bookclub had our monthly booktalk meet upat a hummus restaurant at COEX mall (in Seoul). For November, we read "Crying in H Mart" by Michelle Zauner. Even though I had my teenage years in the states going to school as an asian girl and having super Korean parents, I had hard time relating to the author and did not find significance of reading this book. I was happy to find most of our members agreed with me and we chatted away~~~ in English. This book club is very special where it is consisted of small group of people who loves reading "actual" books, speaks English, and lives around Seoul all at the same time. It is rare to find these kind of people and I am very grateful to have met these wonderful group of readers. Our book talk usually bounces around a lot, and our conversation jumped from our book to topics in our lives and our experiences living abroad and so on. (not everyone in our group has lived abrod actually). I had so much fun that day, talking away in my second language and felt like there's this other version of me that comes out whenever I speak a different language. I am not saying which version is better or worse, but this is a very special experience.
Do any of you feel this way? ever? I am curious.