Paintedspires is baaack! And other stuff.

[ileliberte]

The first challenge on the newly renovated paintedspires has been launched! Say hello to the Halloween Challenge:

Go here for more information.

I have new glasses. The frames are gold and rectangular/trapezoidal and I have the strange feeling that they're the kind you might see in forbidding-but-sexy-librarian roleplay. Except it makes me look like a cross between Peggy from King of the Hill and this random character from the Simpsons.

rageprufrock shoved me headfirst into asian drama, and some are actually really charming, Coffee Prince is the cutest thing alive and Mars is rather addictive (anyone happen to have the title song?). While we're on the subject of media in other languages, hey, look, German soaps! Some kind individual has put English subtitles on all the Christian/Oliver clips from Verbotene Liebe and they are kind of adorable. I had a brief period of enthusiastically trying to learn German many many years ago, because my best friend was, but since I was trying to do it by myself, it kind of fizzled out soon. I remember a few random words and how to order black coffee :/

Bored now :(

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I'm planning to watch paintedspires; I'm really looking forward to it, actually! The art that came out of the challenge you guys did a while back was so fantastic, and I think a flashart comm is such a great idea.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

I'm glad :) Paintedspires was so much fun, it felt good to think of a way we could still keep the comm up for more art.

[ratcreature]

Hah, I was the same with Spanish. I had a bried enthusiastic period when I volunteered in a project with a bunch of people from Latin America and Spain, and half of the rest of the people knew Spanish too, so conversations randomly switched from German to Spanish, so I wanted to learn it too. But it languages are so hard.

I tend to have this huge motivation slump in that phase when you don't know nearly enough to say or read or listen in any useful way in a language, but are past the initial immediately useful stage of knowing a little for basic communication (like saying hello, or asking for directions and such). Why can't we download stuff into our brains yet?

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

I wish we could, and yeah, languages are hard. That's why learning with someone else is good, even if the other person is learning too rather than a native speaker of that language. I stay much more motivated when it can be slightly interactive, rather than being just me trying to learn nuances of a completely foreign language via printed word.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, that is true. It's just more fun with others too. For a while I was in a Spanish course at a local women's center which offered course prices that were income adjusted, so I had to pay only a fraction of what a regular language course would have cost. Having company and structure really helped. But then the women's center got its funding cut, and couldn't offer these things anymore. :(