I always wanted to learn a foreign language – though was not sure which one!
20- 22 yrs back while working in Wipro, it was French that some of my friends/colleagues were learning in Bangalore – That time I was doing my MS and didn’t have the time to pursue French.
20- 22 yrs back while working in Wipro, it was French that some of my friends/colleagues were learning in Bangalore – That time I was doing my MS and didn’t have the time to pursue French.
Then as time passed, I got a chance to go to the Czech Republic for a few months. There I picked up a few basic phrases in Czech and there I got to meet a colleague in the Prague office who was from Israel and who had a keen interest to teach Hebrew.
David Levy had been working in Prague with LogicaCMG for a couple of years. While having lunch in a Pub with David and talking about our families – I mentioned that I have a daughter - ‘Esther’ and David was so happy to hear that name saying that’s a Jewish name and that he is surprised that Indian people have Jewish names!
David Levy had been working in Prague with LogicaCMG for a couple of years. While having lunch in a Pub with David and talking about our families – I mentioned that I have a daughter - ‘Esther’ and David was so happy to hear that name saying that’s a Jewish name and that he is surprised that Indian people have Jewish names!
That’s when I asked him if he will teach me Hebrew – knowing I will be there only for 1 month or 2. He was more than delighted and started giving me basic lessons in Hebrew. The focus was on the basic alphabets (reading writing) and simple words – and I did enjoy and picked up Hebrew.
After one month I moved from Prague to Brno, and he had given me enough worksheets to practice the basics for 1-2 months. After coming back to Bangalore, I could never take out time to pursue further, also note that in 2005-6 time period online class or material was not too common (especially for Hebrew) eventually I forgot the little Hebrew I had learnt. Thanks to David – till recently I had most of the worksheets he had given me.
After one month I moved from Prague to Brno, and he had given me enough worksheets to practice the basics for 1-2 months. After coming back to Bangalore, I could never take out time to pursue further, also note that in 2005-6 time period online class or material was not too common (especially for Hebrew) eventually I forgot the little Hebrew I had learnt. Thanks to David – till recently I had most of the worksheets he had given me.
As time passed, like people say life happens and we moved to Trivandrum, got busy settling to a new place, Ezekiel happened and learning a new language was not in priority list – Even though I knew Trivandrum has Alliance Francaise for Learning French and one of my colleague who could talk very fluent, Russian cultural center for Learning Russian and Goethe Zentrum for learning Deutsch I wasn’t sure if I could commit seriously on learning a language. And then a couple of years back Esther came home telling that in School they are planning to start German Language classes as Hobby study after school hours, but she never expected that we will ask her to enroll and thus started her learning Deutsch in class 7. Almost 3 yrs later after Esther started learning Deutsch, I decided to learn Deutsch and enrolled for the Level 1 course in Goethe Zentrum.
And I was the only ‘Oldie’ in the class trying to fit in among youngsters J And probably after my 10th I would not have studied as hard as while learning Deutsch, learning a new language this late in life is not an easy task but it’s worth taking the challenge – Have enjoyed the classroom session – the Trainers/Faculty were brilliant all from a diverse background as in professionally (Doctors, IT professional, Teachers, Deutsch Scholars ) are fantastic Deutsch Teachers – very interactive classes, hands-on from day 1 – lots of games to use the language and lots of young friends. Did study till level 2 and decided to take a break starting Level 3, now not sure when I would get back for B1 classes but at least I did learn a basic level of Deutsch /German and I can practice it with my daughter ;) Gokul, Jithu, Anzy - study partners, and made lots of new acquaintances and for a lifetime ! more about the Deutsch Class adventures in some other post
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