31: Learn 30 phrases in another language

With language, you are at home anywhere.

Languages have always troubled me. I learnt Hebrew for 10 years and I still struggle to hold a basic conversations. French and Spanish are worse. I was once kicked out of French class for pronouncing a word so wrong that the teacher was visibly offended. Even English I struggle with. Being partially dyslexic doesn't help. The idea of knowing another language always appealed to me however. Even though I was terrible at it, I liked the idea of being able to communicate with someone else from across the other side of the world in the language they were comfortable speaking.

I planned an Asia trip mid year and I wanted to learn phrases in the countries I visited and from people I met. Malaysia was the easiest country to communicate in. Everyone spoke fluent English and I found the language easy to pick up. In contrast, Japan was difficult. It felt like each word was an entire sentence, and fluent English speakers were few and far between. South Korea was somewhere in between. Although they didn't speak much English, the language was more natural and easier to follow.

I met lots of people from different countries throughout my travels. I asked every new person I met to teach me a phrase in their native language. Stephan was my Dutch friend, and was a good source for explicit Dutch words and Franco was an Argentinian that I met who taught me to never stop the party. But the person I will remember most is Ivan, the Croatian software engineer I met sitting at a bar drinking long island ice-teas in Busan Korea, just before a typhoon hit the town.

Thank you, to all the wonderful and strange people that I met throughout my journey for helping me accomplish this challenge!