Can you look back at a single moment or experience that set the tone for the rest of your life? Not everyone can point to something that dramatic, but I'm fortunate enough to be able to say I can. Sure, there have been many defining moments in this full life of mine, but I'd like to tell you about one that actually helped determine its course.
When I was five years old, my parents moved the family to Perth, Western Australia, where I started school and went through the fourth grade. When it was time to move back to the States, for a reason I'm afraid I won't know till I see my parents again in the next life, they decided to take the long way home....
Rather than flying back east across the Australian continent and across the Pacific to the US west coast, my parents and all four of their boys boarded an ocean liner called the SS Canberra and embarked on a voyage that changed my life. Although I had spent four years as an American in a foreign country, it was at least an Anglo culture where I didn't have to learn another language (although some would argue that Aussie, or "Strine" as some call it, is a language in itself!).
I was the age of my oldest grandchild now, an impressionable nine. We stopped at ports where I was confronted at every turn with new sights, smells, and perhaps most impacting, languages. I was completely enthralled with the way everyone around me was jabbering -- and understanding each other! Whether it was Tamil in Sri Lanka, Arabic in Egypt, or Italian and French in Europe, I was hooked. What I have described so briefly here was actually a five-week odyssey, and arguably more than any of my brothers, I carried from that trip a permanent imprint of the multicultural, multilingual patchwork that makes up the human race.
It wasn't long before I got the opportunity to study my first foreign language in a special summer school program, and I haven't stopped since. But if you know me well at all, you know I see foreign language learning not as an end in itself, but as a means of connection with people from other cultures and other perspectives. I'm not the same person because of the relationships that have been forged with people from the four corners of the earth.
This is what drives everything I do in my professional life, whether it is teaching foreign languages and global studies, writing, or leading cultural tours, it's all about connecting with people. If you know what I'm talking about, you know you and I are the richer for it.
I’d love to hear about your defining moment. Just leave a comment below so we can all cebelrate it with you!