Posts Tagged "Challenges"

Broken Brain

Posted on Jun 17, 2013 | 4 comments

I had another broken brain moment the other day. Which is nothing new, really, but unfortunately this one happened during an exam. Usually this frustration arises when I have to write in Spanish or in Dutch but this time it happened while I was writing in English.

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For the love of hygiene.

Posted on Apr 18, 2013 | 10 comments

On Wednesday it happened. The last straw was placed on the delicate little camel’s back and my toes crept right up to the very end of the ledge of sanity. I was washing my hands in one of the women’s restrooms in my faculty building and as I rinsed away the soap bubbles a girl exited a bathroom stall and came up to the sink.

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Words, Woords, Woorden

Posted on Mar 15, 2013 | 3 comments

In this video David Crystal, a linguist with great authority on the English language, discusses his favorite words in the English language.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my favorite words. I don’t necessarily think I have chosen any favorite words consciously, but I think I subconsciously choose to use certain words and certain constructions of words without realizing it.

This phenomenon is even more interesting to me when I think about it in the context of learning a second or third language.

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How I traveled across the Atlantic with my kitchen mixer.

Posted on Feb 13, 2013 | 4 comments

I never thought one of my ambitions would be to carry a 37 lb (16.7 kg) kitchen mixer through the Atlanta airport. Now that I’ve done it, I must say I guess I feel a bit more accomplished. After all, it’s probably not an endeavor that anyone would want to undertake. If given another option perhaps I wouldn’t have chosen to do so either. It was the tragic mistake of misreading a decidedly misleading text about the transportation of fragile and bulky objects that led to the start of this enormously heavy adventure.

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Honest Boats

Posted on Oct 10, 2012 | 0 comments

3 weeks since classes started at the University. My brain is still intact but there is no definite amount of time to say how long it might remain so. I sometimes bike to my lectures (that is, if I deem the Belgian skies trustworthy) and about half-way through my ride to the city I encounter two lovely murals. They are painted on the sides of the building just at the base of the pedestrian bridge that crosses the water. It really must be one of my favorite spots in Ghent. I love how in this place nature and art seem to blend with industrialism.

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