The Ordeal of Learning a Language alone.

So, I've decided to stop learning French and start learning Italian. This month of February I'm focusing exclusively on Italian to see how far  I can go on my own. I don't really need Italian, I don't need to learn it for anything serious so I'm just doing it for the heck of it. But of course, this leads me to think once again about this whole idea of learning a language alone.

I'm a big promoter of self-education and I'm pretty much a self-educated person, so of course: I like the idea of learning a language alone.

And I understand why many people find the idea interesting. I mean, it's not always easy to find a language teacher, a good one or an affordable one, so the notion of doing this entire process alone seems like an incredibly attractive idea.

But this idea of learning a language on your own always forces me to ask a lot of questions.

Questions like:

• What is the maximum level that you can reach alone without proper tuition or living in another country?


• What are the best conditions to learn a language alone?


• What are the cons? (Because, of course, there are cons)


• Which languages should never be studied alone?


• When should we get a teacher and when should we go solo?

One of the initial things that I must say (and this applies to the whole notion of self-education in general) is that is NOT for everyone.

By this I'm not implying that just a limited number of people are capable or have the talent of doing it, no. In fact, it doesn't matter what your capacity is, because learning a language is not a matter of talent, it's a matter of will. That's the first reason why I say this is not for everyone, not everyone has the will to do it. Personally, I've never met anyone, besides myself, who is willing to go to the whole ordeal of learning a language on their own, even if they know it's possible. And I get it, it's not something that is for everybody, that doesn't mean that I'm better or smarter than them, that just means tha we have a different set of hobbies.

But it's not all just fun and games, in order of doing this, you need to be highly motivated, you need to be patient, you need to be disciplined, you need to be willing to construct a new habit, you need to look for material and you need to be consistent, all of that on your own.

As you can see, none of the reason I've just described require any particular talent, but they require a strong will.

And where are you going to obtain your strong will?

Defining why are you learning this language in the first place. Defining your goals and purposes. This is something that I already discussed about in a video, here it is if you want to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w-8k0tUQ1o&list=UUUCihBXpSwutALS1mIn3RBA&feature=c4-overview

I mention this again because it's quite an important factor, it's the thing that you need to be reminding yourself every time that you're struggling to understand something new or every time that you're having a rough time speaking about something. Your purpose is going to be the fountain of your motivation, and if you don't have a strong fountain, you're not going to get very far.

I will attempt to answer some of my own questions, I would also like to know what you guy think about this.

Now, regarding one of my questions:

• What is the maximum level that you can reach alone without proper tuition or living in another country?

Well, I guess this depends on two factors: yourself and the language you're learning. My formula regarding this question is: The more motivated you are and the more popular the language you're learning is, the easiest is going to be to reach a high functional level without proper tuition or living in another country. For example, I believe that everybody is capable of reaching a high functional level in English on their own, because English is the most popular language in the world (and also on the web) and it's incredibly easy to find material to learn it.

Other languages that have this characteristic are Spanish, French, German and Italian, Japanese, Chinese, etc. The more popular the languages are, the easiest is to find material regarding them, the more material you're able to find, the higher the level you can achieve alone.

I believe that I'm capable of reaching a high level of Italian on my own because there are a lot of material regarding that language, however, I don't think I would be able to reach the same level this way studying Serbian. I don't mean that there are no Serbian books, but there are more Italian books than Serbian books at my disposal because Italian is a more popular language than Serbian. So I guess that I'd be able to reach a higher level of Italian than Serbian at the end of the day.

• What are the cons? (Because, of course, there are cons)

Well, you don't have anyone to monitor you but yourself, and let's admit it, that sucks. It's harder to know whether or not you're making mistakes, and if it's a mistake, how bad is it?, and sometimes, we tend to ignore certain small details of the language that later turn out to be huge details. For example: the tones in languages like Chinese or Thai, or the musical intonation of languages like Spanish and Italian, etc. And sometimes, is easier to learn grammar if you have a good teacher that gives you special tips that you can't find anywhere else.

• When should we get a teacher and when should we go solo?

The first thing that I would like to say is that there's nothing wrong with finding a teacher, honestly, I recommend you do that. And still, you can study on your own outside the classroom. For me that's the best way to study a language, you have the best of two worlds. I guess that you should find a teacher immediately if you really need to become functional in a language in a short period of time, if that's your situation, then finding a teacher is a most.

Also, if you feel that you've reached a language plateau (which I did while studying French), finding a teacher is also a good way to keep things rolling. A year ago, I felt that I was going nowhere with my French, I felt that I've reached a wall and that I wasn't learning as much as I once was (Trust me, than can happen to you at any time). Then, I found a French teacher and things started to change, the language became much more interactive and my level actually increased. So, don't be afraid of teachers, specially if they are good. Besides, it's a good way of keeping your skills fresh.

I guess that you should fly solo if you don't have anything that is pressuring you and if you are pleased with the way that you've been learning thus far.

So this has been a little overview regarding the ordeal of learning a language on your own and my experience with it. It's still a topic that I tend to analyze a lot and I also think it's an important notion to take into consideration when we are discussing stuff about education in general.

Thanks for reading :)

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On the importance (or lack of it) of starting something the right way.

I think it's impossible to determine what moment is a good moment to start doing something.

What is the appropriate moment to become enrolled in something? what is the appropriate moment to start a habit? or to leave one?

It's truly rare to find a moment which you could interpret as the absolute moment in which you should start doing something, and  if you ever find that so-called perfect moment chances are that you should have started a long time before that. But the idea that always governs me is the idea of having a good start, becoming almost a obsetion. I've always been a firm follower of the belief that if something starts the wrong way, it will never be able to become something good.

But now, I ask myself: is a good start really all that necessary?

I guess is helpful and motivational, but is it really the great denominator that's going predict the fate of an endeavour?

I guess sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.

It only is, if you take good starts too seriously to begin with, if you don't care about them, chances are that they're not going to affect you in any significant way. Is it just another idea that we just take for grant it without actually thinking about it?

For example, in my case, playing guitar, writing and learning languages, all of them are stuff that I've become progressively good as the years go by, buy I don't have the finest idea of how it all got started. I don't remember what was the first chords or the first song that I played, I don't remember what was the first foreign word I learned and I don't remember what was the first thing I wrote in order to express something deep inside.

But most importantly, I don't remember if any of them were either good or bad experiences, I have no idea. I just kept doing those things till this day without the finest idea of how I actually started. Fact that leads me now to believe that: the way you start doesn't hold any particular significance if you just keep going, chances are that as you go by you won't even remember how it all got started anyways and if you do, it's probable that that initial reaction has fade away and holds no effect on you anymore...

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Goddess Of Thunder (Short Story in Progress), Chapter 2

Second chapter of this little short story of mine, hope you'll enjoy it.

II

Back where she belonged, the storm was rising again. The sound of the engine became her meditation mantra, perhaps she was ready to do it one more time. She knew which direction she had taken, moving ahead and pushing forward, she was meeting a recurring dead-end. As the mist unfolded in the horizon, there she was, the mountain, approaching at 200 miles per hour. She was ready to relive the same old story all over again, but this time, it was going to be different.

Her mantra was broken, as she started to hear other engines behind her. She took a quick look back and there was a gang of five bikers, following her. The lead biker of the gang accelerated until he was besides Ailine, he drove closer and closer to her.

"Where are you going?" He screamed. "This is no place for little bitches!"

The biker accelerated and he surpassed Ailine. Suddenly all the gang did the same, and now Ailine was the one behind them.

"Your husband is waiting for his dinner" one of them yelled while laughing.

Their bikes were far more superior in any sense, but Ailine was filled with anger, so she decided to take her bike into the maximum level, completely overcharging the capacity of the engine.

They arrived to the mountain, the mountain had a spiral path which bikers took in order to ascend it. It was a perpetual curve with and infinite amount of natural obstacles coming from everywhere: rocks appearing and falling out of nowhere, bones of both human and animals carefully placed so that they could break the tires, ivy on the floor that made you slow down and lose balance, occasional waterfalls that made slip and fall, and people also said that there were even supernatural forces ready to block your path.

It didn't matter what sort of great biker you were, you needed to slow down at the moment that you started to ascend the great mountain. All of the bikers did that, so Ailine accelerated even more to catch up with them.

Ailine started her ascendency, the last biker wasn't to far ahead of her. It was the moment to slow down, the path was starting to get dangerous but she only needed to focus, suddenly everything was slow and she could perfectly view everything up ahead. The biker in front of her made his first and last mistake, the ivy made him lose his balance and he fell. Ailine smiled but soon regain focus.

Despite having amazing bikes, the bikers couldn't handle the wrath of the mountain, one by one they fell, prey of the mountain's surprises, but Ailine remained. There was one biker left, the leader of the gang. Ailine was catching up on him, and she was ready to play dirty if he initiated.

The biker was very focus, but as Ailine began to approach, he started to realize that he wasn't alone. He took a quick look back and there he saw her. The adrenaline was starting to become greater and greater for both of them. They were reaching the peak of the mountain, it was the first time that Ailine reached this far but realizing this distracted her for a few seconds,when she regain focus, he saw the biker pointing at her with a gun.

"Don't disturb my concentration!" He said while pointing the gun and driving.

He began to shoot, Ailine tried everything to dodge the bullets but one of them hit her frontal tire. She lost all control, her bike was gonna go down. She knew the race was over for her, the last that she could do was to crash her bike with his so that he would also lose balance, after doing this, she fell.

For a second, Ailine thought that she was going to die, she had never reached so high, so the fall was going to be ten times harder, and so it was. But she didn't fell all the way, she was able to stop the fall in one of the lower levels of the mountain. She was injured but not so badly and she would had continued if the tire of her bike wasn't pumped.

She still wanted to make sure if that bastard actually fell when she crashed into him.

The answer was no, he was still up there but he was losing balance, it was only a matter of time before he suffered the same fate as hers. Ailine just wanted to see him fall. He lost all control of the bike and there was a closed curve lying ahead, it was going to be his end. He didn't manage to make that curve and his bike was suddenly in the air.

She was waiting for him to fall right away but... it didn't happen. He began to fall slowly, like if his bike was slowing down the effect of gravity for him.

"Why don't you fall?" was all that she was thinking about.

But the biker and his bike refused to fall quickly. While falling, the biker was trying everything the restart the engine with his pedal, but the engine was already on. It was in that moment were Ailine realized the he was trying to activate another pedal, his bike had a secondary pedal but she didn't know why it was there for.

The biker finally managed to activate the pedal and suddenly a small and thin platform made out of light appeared beneath his tires, it was literally as if he was riding a lightning, that lightning platform stopped the fall completely. The bike was standing on top of that luminous platform and it was no longer falling, it was as if the biker was suspended in the air, with nothing pulling him down.

Ailine knew in that moment that he was possibly an ordinary biker but that was no ordinary bike. Once that he realized that his situation was under control, the biker started his main engine and he began to ride was again, but this time, in the middle of the air and that luminous platform followed his bike through the air while leaving a path of light behind it.

Ailine couldn't believe what was going on, she had never seen anything like it, and she had seen a lot of other extraordinary events, but this one seemed like a miracle to her.

The biker was riding the sky, he was flying around the mountain, he was quickly ascending, flying in a circular manner. He was going to do it, he was going to reach the summit of the mountain and Ailine couldn't do anything but to stand there and witness.

The mountain was suddenly surrounded by a path of lightning, a spiral of light that was about to conquer the summit of the mountain. The biker was riding through clouds and dust. Ailine was still looking far away, she knew that he was going to be the one destined to complete this millennial challenge, but soon, she realized that she was wrong. He was a few meters away of reaching the final destination, but his triumphant march was going to last no longer.

Ailine, watching the epic scene, saw the biker being stroke by a real and powerful lightning that descended from the heavens. The strike was harsh and brutal, the bike exploded in the middle of the air and the biker was blown away. The smoke remained there, as a sign of a great failure, the biker and the remaining pieces of the bike were slowly falling away, the distance was too high and the biker was completely unconscious.

He fell close to a river near the mountain, she wanted to see who he was, although he was probably dead by now. She descended the mountain on foot and she realize there was nobody else, all of the other bikers were gone. Ailine began to run to the site of the fall. There were pieces of the bike still falling from the sky. As she was running, she didn't even know what had happened yet, she couldn't believe what she had just witnessed.

Before reaching the place of the fall, Ailine stumble upon the frontal half of the bike, she tried to touch it but it was burning. She rolled it over with her feet to examine it more carefully, it was almost impossible to distinguish anything special about it because it was almost completely burned down. However, she was able to distinguish a peculiar insignia at the front of the bike. It was a strange logo that she wasn't able to figure out, but around this strange logo it read "Da Speller Original".

She arrived at the river, and there he was. Lying on the ground, facing up and gazing to the sky, his clothes were completely burned out, his helmet was melting but his eyes were wide open, as if he was seeing the answer of all of his questions written down in the surface of those gray clouds. Ailine stood beside him, she thought that he was dead until she looked at him blink. Somehow, he was still alive. His eyes moved, and now he was looking at Ailine, she took her glasses off, and for the first time, the real world was as dark and cloudy as the way that the glasses represented it.

"Did... did you see her?" The biker asked Ailine.

She was shocked to see him still alive.

"Wh... what?" The rhythm of her heart began to increase.

"Did you... see her?" The biker asked once again.

"Who?" she asked back.

The biker began to look at the sky once again.

"The Goddess" he responded.

She had never believed those stories, but concerning the events that she witnessed that day, everything changed for her. The biker began to laugh with his final breath. When he reached the final second of his life, he just inhale and with that air he whispered:

"If I'm not worthy then no one is"

His eyes closed and his life was no more. Ailine looked at the mountain behind her and then she looked at the sky above her, realizing that the legend was true.

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Goddess of Thunder (Short Story in Progress), Chapter 1

This is the short story that I've been working on for almost a month, I wanted to posted as a single post but it got to long that I think I'm going to divide it in chapters. The story is not over yet but I hope to finish it soon.This story is about bikers and its a little bit surreal, hope you enjoy the first chapter.

I

The smell of the highway was starting to become the personal aura that followed Ailine everywhere she went. Rolling and rolling, there was no ending to her race. The mountain defeated her, but she was willing to come back, but now it was not the time.

The days were always dominated by white and enormous clouds in the skies, but for her, it was always stormy because she never took those sun glasses off. A permanent storm with only one way out: The road. She only had to focus in going forward; otherwise the storm would sweep her away.

Fuel was running low, the journey had to stop for a few minutes, there was always a gas station/restaurant at her disposition, and she only had to take her glasses off.

“That’s a fine bike” said the waiter as he delivered her cup of coffee.

“It is” she replied, blowing the hot smoke of the cup.

“I used to have one of them until some god-damned bastards stole it from me when I wasn’t looking at my backyard…”

The man expected some kind of signal of sympathy or even a “That sucks” but nothing came from the girl.

“… Those are great for recovering long distance; may I ask where are you going?”

Ailine drank a little bit of coffee and replied.

“Going north for the moment, it doesn’t seem that my destination is changing any time soon.”

The man just began to look at her with eyes of speculation.

“North? ...are you heading to the mountain?”

She nodded while watching the wooden table.

The man laughed a little bit.

“Are you one of those bikers who are trying to reach the top of the mountain?”

“Take a guess” she said.

The waiter had a wide open smile.

“Oh man, I knew there was something special about you.”

The other customers were starting to yell at the waiter, impatiens for their lack of customer attention. The waiter went away for a few minutes, and then he returned back.

“Let me tell you something, beautiful. Your bike is fine, I mean is goddamn fine, no question about it. But you will never reach the top of that mountain with it, I’m sorry but it can’t be done. You know how to ride, but there’s only one way for reaching that summit, baby, and that’s flying.”

Smiling she responded.

“I know that well old fella, I’ve fallen many times and I’ve seen many more fall, but thanks for reminding me.”

“Then why the hell are you going back there, are you waiting a miracle or something?”

Ailine heard that word and something awoke inside her. The mountain was the only thing that she lived for, if something like that ever happened she would have no idea of how to react. That would defeat the entire meaning of riding and she knew that at the moment that she stopped riding, the storm would sweep her away into oblivion. Perhaps a miracle was the last thing that she wanted.

“I just like to try and fail.” she answered.

“God, you DO need a miracle” said the waiter as he went to recover some plates of other customers.

Ailine’s cup was empty and there was nothing for her left to do there, so, it was moment to return to the road.

“But maybe, I’ll be your miracle man today” said the waiter when Ailine was just about to ask for the bill.

“What do you mean?” she asked, just as a reflex.

The waiter’s face started to evoke a great mystery.

“Do you know who Teller da Speller is?”

Ailine had heard the myth before and she didn’t want to lose any more time talking about it.

“Yes, the mechanic from another planet, I’ve heard about it, could you please bring me the bill?”

“You said it as if it were some kind of folk story” The waiter said.

“I don’t know a lot of people from other planets, but the ones I do know, are not mechanics.”

“Well, this one is, I know that I’m demanding skepticism here but he’s the greatest and most legendary mechanic of this generation, he could take whatever piece of shit and transform it into a magical and unstoppable rocket that could travel galaxies!” the waiter didn’t regulate his volume and the entire restaurant was looking at him.

“You talk about him as if he was real.”

The waiter began to laugh.

“Oh, my young lady, he IS real. I know him personally, in fact…” he came closer to the girl as if he was about to whisper a big secret “he’s the step brother of the owner of this chain of restaurants”.

Ailine had lost enough time chatting, the road was waiting for her.

“I can contact him if you want, you would be amazed of what he can do. Lokie Santana… I mean, he was an excellent rider but he would have gotten nowhere if it wasn’t for the bike that Mr. da Speller prepared for him. Oh man, with a bike like that, the summit of that mountain would kiss your tires.”

Ailine didn’t know how much she owned and she wasn’t going to wait for the bill, so she just left 10 bucks on the table and she stood up.

“Not interested right now but thanks for the offer.” she said while leaving.

Thanks for reading :)

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Solitude Adventures, A Science Fiction Novel: Chapter 4

Fourth chapter of this science fiction novel. I've been working on a short story right now, so that's why Solitude Adventures is in a small hiatus right now, nonetheless I bring to you Chapter 4.  I'm thinking on posting this short story than I'm currently working on in chapters because it got way longer than the story I originally envisioned. I don't even know if it's a short story anymore, but I guess that I'll posting it here while I finish it. I hope you enjoy this new chapter, and thanks for reading.

Piece of Heaven

The brutal sound of water was the only thing that surrounded my head at that moment; I didn't need to open my eyes to see what was going on. Time passes slow in the waters but fast at the same time; so slow to realize its empty harmony yet so fast that you're not longer aware that you're not there. My feet were stepping on solid ground, my eyes were still closed, a tree behind me, a rope in front of me and a fist inside my stomach. Being tied up is no funny business folks.
"You're a hard son of a bitch to find, I'll give you that" he said as he punched my face next.
I open my eyes and I look at him. I didn't even know the guy, yet he saved my life and was about to take it away. I guess that you should know the name of the person who did those two things to you.
"I almost drown trying to get your sorry ass... but it was worth it" he punched once again in the stomach and I started to spit blood.
"What is your name?" I asked him with my blooded voice.
"What, my name?" he asked me back.
"Well yeah, you just saved my life and now you're going to kill me, I guess I should know your name"
He got closer to me and then he grabbed my neck; I clearly saw his face smiling. He was a little bit younger than me, with dark hair and from Asian decency, probably Japanese.
"But I'm not going to kill you sweety, not yet" he then grabbed my hand and he   pulled out a knife that was under his pocket.
A part of me thought that I was already dead and that this place was some kind of hell with my torturer in front of me, but then I quickly realize that I was still alive. The knife went through my hand as if it were butter, now I know the pain that Jesus Christ himself felt and let me tell you folks... it's no funny business.
Immediately after that, he began to twist the knife. The more he twisted, the more he smiled. I screamed at levels that I wasn't even aware that I could.
"What is your goddamned fucking problem?!" he smiled even more while I was screaming that.
When the knife gave a rotation of one hundred eighty degrees inside my hand, he pull it out. My hand was a fountain of blood.
"I guess that's the problem" he said while he was cleaning the red knife with his white shirt. "You see, I didn't even paid you to hack up my exam, I was one of the few ones who actually passed by their own".
He grabbed my other hand and he did the same thing.
"I just heard that the guys were up to kill someone tonight and I just decided to join in."
And that moment, I finally realized who that fucker was, I resolved and long forgotten mistery in probably the worst way possible. A few years ago, a series of horrible murders took place inside and outside the school, must of them we're girls who had been tortured and then killed by a series of painful knife wounds, finally they we're crucified in the forest. He quickly became known between us as the Stigmata Killer, this was the first major treath that we faced together, and what did we do? we immerged ourselves in fear and paranoia. The Stigmata Killer was one of us, but who? we couldn't trust in anyone, we couldn't trust in ourselves. We had a serial killer in our school, he had killed seven girls already and we didn't know what the hell to do. We were expecting that the Luvic Corporation would carry an investigation about this, but they never came. We filled the report at docent times but we knew that this was not even necessary, they had systems of surveillance, they knew what was going on here... or at least we thought they knew. The Stigmata Killer episode was a particular devastating one, because after that, we knew that the surveillance systems of Luvic Corporation were no longer activated, those systems represented the law and the order of this civilization and they were no longer there. There was nobody watching us, no punishment for crimes, it became just another planet without law.

Seeing that no one else responded to the treat, a friend of mine and I decided to investigate the case but we didn't resolved anything, the Stigmata Killer left no tracks, nothing, it was almost impossible to trace him. After a few more kills he just stopped, there we're no more killings left, the Stigmata Killer disappeared, but the damage he made to us was almost beyond repair, when everybody figured out that there was no surveillance in our planet, violence, crimes and murders became pretty normal in this new civilization of ours. This changed nothing for me, until this precise moment in which everybody was trying to kill me. I was always a criminal but I worked in the shadows without harming anyone, but now, with this paradigm shift, working in the shadows seemed redundant.
"You were one of those bastards who was trying to track me down eh?" said the Stigmata Killer.
I found this practically unclimatic, I didn't even know who this guy was, he was just a skinny little dude who looked really sick and weak, I couldn’t believe this person would be able to cause so much chaos.
"Why did you stop killing?" I asked him.
He walked near me and he took my right hand, he quickly purred some kind of spray over it and my hand began to heal immediately, once this happened, he stabbed the knife once again.
"I stopped killing because I stopped receiving orders" he responded while I was screaming. He was rotating the knife even more slowly than the last time.
"What the hell are you talking about, orders from whom?"
"You don't need to know, you're going to die anyway and I don't think that you would understand it."
"I'm gonna die? So you have orders to kill me?"
He didn't respond to my question and he proceeded to the torture.

My screams became a permanent resonance in the woods, unfortunately, the attention that they demanded wasn't met, but I don't think it would have made any difference otherwise. Soon, he was going to move to the kill, a victim more, this was not vengeance, no revenge of any kind, just a pointless homicide, I guess that I preferred to be killed by someone who really had strong intentions and good reasons to kill me, like any of the other fellas.
Now, the knife was inside my right shoulder, this was the greatest moment of pain in my entire life, a part of me felt that I was about to black out, I guess that wasn't a bad idea after all. The pain was beyond my limits of resistance and this weren't going to get nicer, so I was preparing to close my eyes and say good bye to everything I ever knew, when suddenly, an event that saved my life and change my entire perception of the world occurred.
It all began with music, I started to hear music and I wasn't the only one, he was listening to. To be honest, it wasn't music; they were just sounds, really powerful resonances that seemed to have some kind of harmony. The sounds became louder, like if they were approaching the place we we're on. He pulled the knife out of my shoulder, the pain moved around my entire body and my scream was the loudest of the night, but it was also silent, for the sounds were to loud and powerful that my scream became silenced by them. He began to look around us, trying to find the direction in which the sound we're coming from, but there was no direction, the sounds we're all around us, they came from all directions.
Suddenly, he stopped to look around and he froze completely, as if he had just made some kind of realization, he dropped the knife, and he grabbed his head with his two hands. Somehow, he knew what those sounds meant, and he began to worry as they approached, he looked at me and then he looked at his hands, all tainted with my blood, the sounds we're near and he tried to clean his hands, of course it was impossible.
When he realized he couldn't clean the red of his hands, he began to cry. He began to weep like a little baby. He then quickly run towards me and healed my shoulder with that spray he previously used. I saw his face and his tears closer, his eyes we're full of terror and regret, as if he was asking for forgiveness or something of that kind. Immediately, he picked up the knife that he had drop and he headed towards me once again.
I was sure that this was going to be the final moment; it seemed that his time was running low, for some reason, and he was just going to finish me off quickly. I was just praying that he didn't cut off my throat; that was the worst death imaginable, a death without screams, however, filled with blood, pain and slow agony.
He went behind the tree and I knew that he was going to do it that way. I closed my eyes and hoped that my dead would be faster than I thought. I felt a shallow coldness in my neck, the sounds approached more and more, my neck felt colder and colder, exposed, waiting for the final cut. A final cut did happen, but my neck was still intact; the rope that was around me was the one that received it. The Stigmata Killer (or whoever he was) freed me from his own trap; he rescued me from his own attempt of homicide.
I felt to the grass, tired and weak, the sounds had reached us, even though my body had never experienced these kinds of extreme circumstances, I got up quickly. The Stigmata Killer pushed to the other side. He was still crying, desperately, but he was also screaming something at me, of course I wasn't able to hear anything because of the beautiful sounds that apparently saved my life. I didn't understand a thing he said to me, but I didn't need to, his two arms we're clearly telling to get the hell out of there, to run as fast as I could, and I did as I was commanded.
While I was running away, which actually was at a much slower speed than the one that you're imagining, I could help but to ask myself: "what the hell did it just happen?", "why he didn't kill me?", "what the hell we're those sounds?". I had to know, I had to go back and see what those sounds were, yes I know, probably one of the most stupid decisions that someone in my situation could have made, but after all, I don't need to explain myself to you, you don't need to know how fucked up I am.
As I returned to the scene of the almost crime, the sounds we're still there, I was hiding in the trees, approaching really slowly, trying to find my friend. The sounds finally stopped and immediately after that, I saw him. He was kneeling down and facing the ground, his hands were in his pockets and he was still crying. I noticed that he was saying something, I thought that he was prying or something like that, so I approached a little bit to find out. Now, a little bit closer, I could clearly listen to what he was saying, unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word; he was speaking in Japanese. However, I quickly noticed something, he said a short stream of words, then he stopped, then he said another stream of words, stopped once again, he then raised his head, showed his red hands and screamed something as if it there was someone in front of him. He was having a conversation. I put my hand inside my right pocket, and found that my pocket recorder was still intact. I quickly started to record everything that he was saying, so that later I could find a program able to translate it.
I still wanted to know with who he was speaking with, his voice was the only voice I could hear, so, once again, I moved a little bit further to see if someone else was there. To my surprise, there was no one. I quickly look at him once again, and I couldn't see any kind of attachments or gadgets in his ears, eyes or head. It was easy to dismiss him as a complete lunatic, after all he was a serial killer, but, what's up with all of those sounds that we previously heard. I clearly felt that something was approaching and he to. It was unlike anything that I have heard or experienced before. I knew that it I wasn't just watching a lunatic speaking with himself, there was something more to this, there was something else going on.
He stood up, he was still talking and crying, I was recording everything. After talking and crying a little bit more, he hugged the air. He just jumped and hugged the air as if he was hugging someone, he then cried some more. "What the hell is going on?" that was the only thought in my mind. After hugging the air for a couple of minutes, he stopped and he cleaned his tears. He was nodding his head, as if he was listening to someone, he then stopped nodding, he stopped moving completely for a second. He suddenly turn around and look exactly at the place where I was hiding. He saw me.
At that precise moment, I thought that I had probably recorded enough. In less than a second, I put my recorder inside my pocket, turn around and I just ran; this time, at a much faster speed than the one that you're imagining.

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French Grammar Video Lessons with exercises

In this past two years I've been studying French as my main activity, I'm going to present the DELF B1 on April so that's the reason why I've been studying so much. Anyways, for me, the best way to reinforce my knowledge is to teach it, and obviously, the most tricky part of any language is its grammar, so that's the reason why I'm making these series of french grammar videos. So that I can reinforce my knowledge of the rules and help people who are just learning it. Besides the videos, I'm also creating little courses regarding the subjects in memrise.com, so that you can internalize the aspects of the grammar that we are discussing:

These are the videos so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqgrLZmXUb0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQOyldBYNEY

Exercises of conjugation (1st group of verbs): http://www.memrise.com/course/190829/1-conjugation-of-the-verbs-of-the-1st-group/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goq3p2rcGLk

Exercises of conjugation (2nd groups of verbs): http://www.memrise.com/course/197395/2-conjugation-of-the-verbs-of-the-2nd-group/

That's all so far, hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading :)

 

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What was once written (Short Poem)

This one is for all the new years that have come:

What was once written

As a template that has drastically fallen

we impregnate our wishes and dreams to come.

Is not the first time, but we react as such.

We look for the reset button one more time,

we push it every year, only to find out...

...that its effect is never lasting, anyways.

The template slowly erases and fades away

to become a chaotic sheet of paper

unable to recognize or remember...

...what was once written, by who?, for what? and why?

The message is always to ride the dragon.

But the imposed goal is to drive the dragon.

We try to drive him with total and full control...

...but we end up being carried away by him.

Hoping to grow ourselves, before seeing the final sunset... once again.

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