Добро вече, драги читаоци...

Despite what my GPA in college (which, after seeing my transcript recently wasn't as bad as I remembered) suggests , I really do love to learn things.  I wish I had the discipline to just sit down and read and learn more often, but I just don't.  I've got a whole list of different things I'd like to learn, and I'm always finding more subjects.   First on my list (well, it should be, at least) is Music Theory.  You'd think I'd already know all about it, but I just clashed with my instructor the first day, and we took an immediate disliking to each other.  After that, being the brilliant 19-year-old that I was,  I just decided that I would refuse to learn from her.  Like I said, brilliant.  Yes, I do regret that, by the way. 

The other things that I really want to learn (besides the plethora of musical instruments that I'd love to master) are foreign languages.  I took a few years of Spanish back in high school, but that was almost 20 years ago!  I can still pick some out here and there, but I'm nowhere near as fluent as I thought I might be at one time. 

A few years ago I started trying to teach myself to speak Bosnian.  St. Louis' south side, especially the Bevo Mill area, originally almost entirely a German area, is home to the biggest population of Bosnians outside of Sarejevo.  I used to work around a bunch of Bosnian guys, and I always wanted to be able to talk to them, so I just picked up whatever books I could find and went to town.  The guys there were pretty impressed, actually, at how well I had learned the pronunciations of the alphabet and accents, etc.  Apparently it's just hard to convey these things when teaching, and most people just don't pick up on it. 

I've always been pretty good at picking up accents and dialects, though.  Anytime I've been anywhere for more than a day or so I immediately pick up the local accent - I came back from New York sounding like I was raised in Brooklyn, and when I came back from a church trip to a Mexican border town I kept catching myself asking "que" (Spanish for "what?") anytime I couldn't hear someone speaking to me. 

I'd love to learn Japanese, Chinese, German, French, maybe some Russian, Arabic - I could go on and on, I'm sure.  I probably should have gone into some sort of career dealing with foreign languages.  Oh, well.  I guess it's never too late.

Well, I decided to go with a blue today, for the Bosnian flag.  I should dig out those Bosnian language books again and see if I can start over again learning some of it.  It would probably be very helpful in certain jobs around here, and Lord knows I need a friggin' job!  I also took a closer pic of the stroke, since it's starting to get a little crowded on that thar canvas!  :-)