Today I have decided I cannot wait any longer. I have to write about it...
I've been trying to learn Polish since last summer. I say I am trying because time is little for everything during the school year. But I am still as enthusiastic as I was at the beginning and that is a big word, as we say in Hungarian.
The thing is, that I don't have any help except for a few friends, some books, and the Internet. All right, all right, you could say it must be enough. But I want to learn faster and when you don't have anything else just a 40 and a 50 years old book (not kidding!), based on grammar-translation methodology, it is rather difficult to force yourself to sit down and study.
Anyway, I started. I even managed to find a teacher in my town. (She was VERY surprised when I asked her to teach me, as she has been living here for 12 years and NOBODY asked her to teach Polish...) Then I found some good pages on the net - I can watch the daily news from Szczecin, listen to hundrends of radio programs, translate my homework much more easily :-) and so on.
And then! The new experience, I have never dreamed of. I signed up for the Becoming a Webhead online workshop and IMMEDIATELY met some people who are willing to searn Polish. 'Okay', I hear you saying 'but this is not enough.' Oh, yes it is. Because we have a volunteer teacher, too! Agata was so kind and offered her help. And the reason I started to write this blog today comes now.
Tonight agreed to meet on Yahoo Messenger and have a chat in Polish. I had warned Agata I speak very little, but she said it will be no problem.
So, we met and my mike didn't work for some reason! I couldn't believe it. I could hear her but she couldn't hear me. So we tried a kind of new listening-writing approach. Hey, maybe we found out a new learning style and we'll be famous! :-)))
Anyway. The experience was interesting indeed in many ways. I was listening to Agata (she was kind and spoke very slowly) talking about her town Przemisl, while looking at pictures on the town's website. I answered in writing and gave feedback with smileys (I love using them), and when I didn't understand I just sent a question mark.
At one point I had this terrible urge to speak and it was so disappointing I could not use spoken words to express myself! I have never felt this before. Even with my minimal knowledge I could have told so much! But in writing you cannot express yourself in the same way.
I am sure I am not the first person to experience such thing but it was so new to me that I just had to write about it.
My plan is to write a little now and then in Polish here so that later I can look at my progress. It is so much fun - I had this experience when I was a student. We had to write a diary to our teacher in English. When I read it now I see how I was progressing with my English. I find it quite educating and useful.
So much for now, I have to sleep.
But before I go, I have to write down the first Polish sentence I learnt from my dear friend, Tomek.
Ty masz włochate nogi. :-)))
