Hey everyone! How’s it going? I had planned to give an update some time ago, but life happened. As I’m sure it has been for many of you, too, life has been a bit of a roller-coaster during this pandemic.
For the last few months, I haven’t been working on any writing. After finishing Of Pieces and Memories, I was reluctant to start working on another project mainly because I thought I’d be going back to work soon. While I am back at work now, that took longer than I expected.
But during this time, I haven’t been idle. Back in June I started learning Ukrainian on Transparent Languages, a language learning app offered by my local library. I chose Ukrainian because my dad speaks it, so I thought it would be a good choice as I’d have someone to converse with. While we haven’t spoken together much yet, we have sent each other some letters in Ukrainian. It’s been a lot of fun getting them. 🙂
I coloured the character Birdsong to look like Merlin. 🙂
Then I was talking to a friend of mine who doesn’t live in Canada; he was surprised that all Canadians weren’t bilingual because we have two official languages here. In the end we agreed to learn French together, so suddenly I was learning two languages (although I do know some basic French from elementary and high school, so I’ve been able to progress faster with it than with Ukrainian – I found that, especially in the first month or so, I had to go really slowly with Ukrainian to give my brain time to absorb the new words I was learning). So yes, I’m now learning two languages! 🙂 I then talked my mom into learning French with me (we attempted to take a French class together a few years ago but it was cancelled on us), and have found a few other friends who are learning French too.
At that time I switched from Transparent Languages to Duolingo for both languages. I’m loving Duolingo! I actually just recently achieved a 50 day streak on the app, which is super exciting. 🙂 I do wish there was a bit more Ukrainian content on it though; the French course has these super fun stories, and it’s too bad that the Ukrainian course doesn’t have something similar.
Other than the language learning, I’m currently just trying to stay healthy and positive. I did a lot of colouring in the early months of the pandemic (also helped by Idle Champions’ #idlecoloring, which offered in-game content to the community based on colouring done over the week), and continue to colour if I’m feeling particularly stressed from things. I’ve also been listening to music. I listened to a lot of Solitudes in the beginning of the pandemic, but lately I’ve been listening to songs in French and Ukrainian. Here’s my favourite Ukrainian song, ПЕРЕЖИВЕМ by SKAI – my dad translated the words for me (the title means “We Will Live”):
An Acquaintance with Letters 