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This is the personal newspaper and embarrassingly public journal of an artist and writer in Anchorage, Alaska. Read my whole story here!

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A Russian I knew was delighted that every home had light switches “like in the american movies” and also drank out of red plastic cups casually. The Eiffel Tower, Taipei 101, and Colosseum were all great, but I like little details—hole in the wall dumpling shops, doorknobs in the middle of doors, outside heaters at cafés—what most locals would consider “mundane.” One of the hardest parts of language learning is what I think of as the Freeze. Usually happens when a shopkeeper, server, or any local asks you a question you don’t have a scripted answer for. Your body hears an unfamiliar phrase and freezes up completely. That moment is a nervous system response and not an academic shortcoming, and in my experience, can only be trained out through exposure to the language in an environment where you are surrounded by it. The Freeze diminishes over a couple weeks on-location, but with apps, there’s nobody on the other end of the dialogue making you uncomfortable with an expectant silence, and you don’t train that confidence to converse. It’s expensive but I’d rather save my money up for a couple years and go to the actual target country than pretend I’m learning anything from five minutes of gamified learning every night. (Cinqueterre, Italy by the way) 🇮🇹#languagelearning #learnitalian #language #linguist #polyglot Finished with my winter reading for a total of 16 books! I spent my season building up my writing discipline, practicing annotation habits, broadening my scope of reading, and asking lots of questions. Can’t wait to build my spring and summer pile :) What are you reading lately? Type “so true bestie” if you agree #mandarin #secondlanguage #bilingual #louvre life is just not fair #etymology #linguistics #alphabet #thorn #þorn #þ #language #english It just makes life easier tbh #chinese #mandarin #learnmandarin #learnchinese not a callout just a fact #reels #culturalcriticism This goes out to my friends who always get the same reels from me #friends