Learn a Language

You might have heard of Tim Ferris' bestseller, 4 Hour Workweek or his new book 4 Hour Body. I still haven't made up my mind as to whether he's the real deal or a sly dog scam artist (he's probably somewhere in the middle). In his first book/blog he gives some good tips about learning languages in 3 months (which is just about the same amount of time I'll be training in Albania).

I think his very best tip of both his books and blogs is to use a list of the most frequently used words in English and then translating them into the target language. He ends up giving you two 100 words lists: most used written and most used spoken.

Guess what I'll be doing during downtime at work.

Learn the Days of the Week in Albanian

Nothing fancy today. I downloaded BYKI (Before You Know It) an electronic flash card language tool (thanks Jeff). It's a simple program and if you can't afford Rosetta Stone it's a legal alternative. So I learned the 7 days of the week:

Monday - e hënë

Tuesday - e martë

Wednesday - e mërkurë

http://www.byki.com/ 

Thursday - e enjte

Friday - e premte

Saturday - e shtunë

Sunday - e dielë

You can go here to watch Leila make over emphasized facial expressions while she says each word http://www.watchmojo.com/index.php?id=7046

Enough with the infomercial. Go Buy a Girl a Drink

Card Throwing

After 1 ruined deck of cards, 1 fatigued forearm, and 1 hour of my life I'll never see again; I present to you:

Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMoc7tHMQOg

Boogie doing the Electric Slide ►  

Card Trick

From card tricks to Card Throwing ►

Welcome - Mirë se vini

I just completed Lesson 1 Pimsleuer - Albanian and it's safe to say that I remember nothing. This is truly a foreign language to me. Throughout high school I took Spanish classes and struggled with it but we all had a few buzz words under our belt, you know: quesadilla, burrito, torilla, taco, salsa, gordita, chalupa...the list goes on. At Fairfield I took several semesters of Mandarin but with a background in Cantonese, it wasn't so hard for me. I'm just beginning to realize how brave my classmates were.

I won't complain too much because Shqip uses the Roman alphabet. There's only a couple letters that are different from English and the pronunciation is slightly different as well.

So I was supposed to learn how to say "thank you" but that's too difficult (Faleminderit). Instead I've memorized two words.

Just don't ask me how to pronounce either.

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