Sharing my First TED-Style Talk "The Power of Language"

Ciao a tutti e bentornati sulla mia pagina! (Hello, everyone and welcome to my page!) I wanted to start off by apologizing for not writing on here for a few months. I have to admit that senior year has been much busier than I originally thought, so I hope that you understand. Despite my inactivity, I’m happy to start regularly blogging again for the rest of the year. Though I’m still unsure as to what the future awaits me, I know that this year will be filled with many new adventures.

For today’s post, I’m sharing the links to part 1 and part 2 of the TED-style talk that I gave on Thursday, March 28^th titled The Power of Language. The name of my talk was inspired by my favorite post on this blog with the same name, because the feedback that you all gave me about it was so incredible that I felt that I had to share it with all of you a few years later.

Are you curious about how my bilingual upbringing and bicultural identity have influenced me throughout my life? Do you want to know how I have managed to reach conversational fluency in 6 languages and an advanced level in a 7^th language at the age of 22? If you answered yes to any, or both of those questions, I highly encourage you to watch both parts of my talk.

Once again, I want to thank each and every one of you. None of this would have been possible alone. In fact, most of what I have been able to achieve has taken years of unending love and support from my friends and especially my parents and my sister, Carolina. Espero que sepan que los amo con todo mi corazón. Gracias por siempre apoyarme en todos mis empeños y por ayudarme a realizar todos mis sueños.

Thank you for everything! // Muchas gracias por todo! // Je vous remercie pour tout! // Danke für alles! // Grazie di tutto! // Спасибо вам за всё! // Obrigada por tudo!

Yours,

Laura

Switching Languages- What Does it Mean to Switch Languages?

Hello, everyone and welcome to my blog! I have to admit that it has been too many months since I last posted on here, but I promise that I will be posting more regularly in the upcoming year. I wanted to get back on track by posting about what started this blog in the first place: the concept of switching languages.

Why did I decide to name this blog Switching Languages and what does switching languages even mean? Three years ago, I sat on our living room couch and had a conversation with both of my parents. I remember telling them that I had the idea of creating a blog about the relevance and importance of spreading my love for language learning, but had no idea what I wanted to call my blog. After some reflecting, my dad suggested to call it Switching Languages, because he knew that I had to switch from one language to another on a daily-basis without even thinking twice.

For me personally, switching languages is the ability to speak multiple languages without confusing them, or hesitating when speaking more than one language. You know that you can successfully do so when you hear your parents ask: “Niñas, están listas?” and then immediately talk to your friend and say: “My parents are asking me if we’re ready to leave.” I think of it like a puzzle, or a game. For bilingual or multilingual individuals, this ability is innate. We don’t have to stop and think about every single word we’re going to say before saying it. We simply formulate our thoughts in our head and then say them. It’s really that simple.

A lot of people ask me: “How do you not get confused when speaking 7 different languages?” and “Don’t they get mixed up in your head?” Just like any other human being, I’m not perfect, so there are times in which I forget how to say a word that is rather simple in x language that I have known for years, but, aside from those instances, the answer to both of those questions is no. All of the years of training and changing personas has led me to where I am today.

In other words, languages are not just subjects that I choose to take at university and they are also not just a hobby that I choose to do whenever I have a little bit of free time. They are much more than that. In fact, they have been incorporated into my daily routine for years. The friendships I have made and the people I have met live anywhere from Pennsylvania to Japan, so it is not unusual for me to send messages to my friends in their native languages to ask them how they are doing.

Similarly, all of the notifications that pop up on my feed on my social media are about dozens of countries in more languages than I can recognize, or speak. My family is bilingual, so calling them automatically ensures that I will have spoken, or written in at least 2 languages on that given day. Furthermore, I listen to music and watch videos and movies from around the world. Now that is what I call the power and beauty of switching languages.

If you liked this post and want to keep up with my travel and languages adventures domestically and abroad, feel free to subscribe to my blog by hitting the “subscribe” button on the upper right-hand corner of this blog. I’m looking forward to the third year since the launch of Switching Languages. Espero que tengan un buen fin de semana!

Life Update & Bilingual Poem: "I Am American/ Soy colombiana"

Hello, everyone! It has been a long time since I have posted on here, so I thought that I would take a moment to briefly explain what has been going on in my life these past few months. 

                           

As many of you already know from reading my previous posts, I had to take a medical leave of absence after completing 3/5 months of my semester abroad in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Since then, I have been recovering by going to my neurologist and by getting intensive chiropractic treatment. Today is the big day, as I will be getting LASIK eye surgery to be glasses-free for many years to come. My main hope is that this surgery and my chiropractic treatment will significantly reduce my migraines, so that I can write more blog content for the remainder of this summer. 

Aside from that, I recently created a foodie and travel blog: www.theglobaltummy.com, which will be my main blogging platform on Squarespace, offering me endless opportunities to share my content on all of my @theglobaltummy social media platforms and to showcase what I have to offer as an aspiring food and travel writer. All of my posts will be bilingual in English and in Spanish, French, German, and Italian, so I thought that all of you would be interested in checking it out. Feel free to "subscribe" to my blog to be notified when I upload new posts and to share this post and blog with others to spread the word about it. All you have to do is type in your email to subscribe to it. It's as easy as that! 

Link to my 1st blog post titled When My Love For Food Began: https://www.theglobaltummy.com/…/when-my-love-for-food-began 

Link to my 2nd blog post titled Getting Lost Abroad// Perdersi All'Estero: https://www.theglobaltummy.com/blog-posts/2018/5/23/getting-lost-abroad-en-it 

Lastly, before getting into this week's post, I wanted to let you know that after a lot of thought and talks with my mom, she encouraged me to continue to post on this platform. It has almost been 2.5 years since I created this blog. After being in a rut for so long, I am finally starting to gain some momentum and have come up with some creative and fun content for all of you. What should you expect on here for the rest of 2018? You should expect less "how to" posts and more posts about real experiences I have had with languages and not so much on language learning itself. I may post bilingual poems I have written, or even thoughts I have about my travels and experiences abroad in several languages. As always, feel free to write a comment on this post of anything you would like me to write about, so I can keep that in mind.

For this week, I wanted to share a poem I wrote a few months ago about my so-called "Colombian-American" identity. Am I Colombian? Am I American? Do I feel Colombian-American, none, or both? I bolded the parts written in Spanish for easy reference. Since I am currently in Barranquilla and will be operated later today, I wanted to post something, as I am unsure as to how long my recovery period will be. Qué lo disfruten!

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I am American; soy colombiana. 
I have two identities and cultures that seem so different,

But yet are similar in many ways. 

I grew up bilingually,

embracing what it is like to be fluent and functioning in Spanish and in English,
which was a gift that my parents gave me since before I was born.

You cannot tear me apart and you cannot bring me down,
because I belong to both and yet I belong to none. 

As I sit here and reflect about this,
I wonder what I should respond when people ask me:
"Do you think and dream more in Spanish, or in English?",
"Who are you?",
"Do you prefer one culture over the other?", and
"Which culture do you most identify with?"

These are all good questions that do not have simple answers.
Since I was raised and born in the United States,

English is usually the language that comes out,
but even so, it is not the most natural.
In fact, Spanish is.

Spanish is the first language that I heard being spoken to me as an infant
And I have Colombian family around the world.

The first thing that I do when I wake up is turn around and

remind myself that my parents are nowhere near me,
but when I am with them, I ask: "Buenos días. Durmieron bien?". 

When I am about to fall asleep,
I stop what I am doing
and go into my parents' room to give them a big hug and a goodnight kiss on the cheek.
When I am home, I say: "Buenas noches. Espero que duerman bien."

English and being American may be the easy answer to these questions,
but it is not fully accurate either.
English is the language that belongs to my American environment,
but Spanish is the language of my heart and soul.

Es el idioma que prefiero hablar
cuando quiero hablar sobre mis pensamientos y mis sentimientos
de lo que experimento en el diario vivir.

Soy americana, pero también soy colombiana. 
Soy de aquí, pero también soy de allá.
Pertenezco a esta comunidad, pero también pertenezco a Colombia.
Nadie me cuestiona cuando digo que soy americana;
Lo mismo me sucede cuando digo que soy colombiana.

But at the end of the day,
no one can take that away from me.
I have a rich cultural and linguistic heritage
and I will always spread my wings faster,
so that I can fly even higher.