IT’S nice to learn a second language as early as when you are young. If you are the son or the daughter of a diplomat, then your family may be placed in another country where the culture is definitely different from your home country. When I was in second grade, I was forced to go to Japan and transfer my schooling there. Even though I was enrolled in an international school, I was privileged to have learned Niponggo and the Japanese characters. They were pretty daunting at first but later on, I have come to adjust to learn the language. Besides, Hollywood movies such as Lost in Translation are my mere inspiration to move on learning the new language. At first, I honestly cried and cried of being awkward playing with my Japanese friends but soon, I slowly found out that they were a nice bunch.

After Japan, I was sent to the Philippines or more accurately, my father was. There was nothing else to do as both my parents had decided not to be in my native Spain while my father was busy abroad. There in the Philippines, I learned how to say a few Tagalog words and even some vocabularies in their regional dialects such as Cebuano and Maranao. I also learned some Higaonon words which were spoken by people who had really retained their native ways. After our family’s Philippine stint, I was sent to Thailand and I had really had a jolly good time there learning Thai and also eating Thai delicacies such as frogs. That was a bit similar to the exotic food that I have tasted in the Philippines such as fish paste, whole roasted pork (which they treated as the Thanksgiving turkey), sweet rice cakes and chicken fetuses.

My whole Asian soiree was really a success. I had a jolly good time learning how to raft in the Philippines, I had experienced swimming and even skinny dipping with glowing planktons all around me in the nighttime beach in Phuket, I had experienced deep sea diving in Palawan, and I had experienced eating rice balls at McDonald’s outlets in Tokyo. After my father’s stint in Asia, he was moved to Paris. It was there in Paris where I experienced a very relaxed world. Everybody was moving at his or her own pace and nobody was there to annoy or disturb you. Everybody was busy yet appeared calm in their affairs. Everybody was speaking French of course and it was another struggle for me. I took it as a challenge because they said that French people are the most intellectual persons in the world.

They also said that French is the most romantic language in the world. This is not just a metaphor I believe because French derives from the Roman language of old. French dining is where I also had passion on even if the restaurants here sometimes have very expensive menus laid out. There was even one joke circulating here that if you can’t pronounce the menu, you certainly can’t afford it. That was a decades-old expression but it still rings a bell in these modern times. Yet alone, my experience in France was not limited to the hustle and bustle of the city life. It was there in the Mediterranean coastlines of France that I experienced serenity with the simple fishermen around me.