Olympic Swimming and Leaky Buckets

Learning a second language is an up hill climb. It is two steps forward one back –no more like three steps back. A friend told me that language learning as wanting to go swimming in an Olympic-size pool*. Only when you get to the edge you see that it is totally empty. A few yards away there is a garden hose and a bucket. How full the pool gets depends on you and what you want to do. If you only want to splash a little it only takes a few trips. Wanting to drive to the bottom of the deep end would require more work. If this is true I think my bucket has a hole or two in it.

After Hitomi moved my language classes ended and it seemed hopeless for me to even learn enough to splash in the language. Yet things changed this Saturday. Recently we heard that the community center has free Japanese lessons Thursdays and every other Saturday. I teach during the Thursday lessons but I was able attend the two hour lesson on Saturday. Turned out to be a very overwhelming two hours. I have eight pages to show for it, hopefully with some study I’ll be able to remember it all for my lesson. Muzukashii!

Word Up: Muzukashii -difficult

*If I’ve shared the pool illustration before, forgive me, I must be suffering from short-term memory loss. Yet if this is the first time, just disregard the footnote.