Waiting for green light

[topum]

Orchard Road, Singapore

Comments

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

"would take some serious brain surgery"

(with a hypnotiser's gesture) Trust me!

For her, Russian is still a preferable language - for reading, writing, thinking. Spanish is OK, she talks (she is 14) but it doesn't feel like native at all. Costa Rica is a good place to live: but it's difficult to feel "native" here. A very different mentality.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I know a girl in Norway, she is Norwegian but she came to Norway from Latvia when she was 4. Her Norwegian is native, she does not have an accent. She is also fluent in Russian but I cannot judge how good and accent free that is.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

If local culture satisfies all your needs and gives you a vocabulary to express all you have in mind, than it's easy to become a part of it. If there's a gap, you'll need something else. Here, Spanish culture and language are reduced to a very primitive vocabulary of middle-class TV-watchers. So when people need something else, they move to the territory of other cultures.

Here aristocracy and cultural elite practically don't exist (or just don't differ from others), the society is very homogenic, no alternative ways of life and thinking. So, to save some wider horizon (art, literature, and general "Weltanshauung"), we instinctively keep Russian language and culture. And add a good deal of British to it. In UK, or Germany, or Italy, or US, we wouldn't need to.

In spite of all written above, I love this country. It satisfies my need of freedom (overheated by Russian experience) quite fully.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Does she go to a local school?

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

No she is at a special musical one. General studies - home school.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I get it.