Maria's blog

Quotes of the week: "The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people" -Unknown "The real voyage does not consist in having new landscapes but in finding new eyes"-Marcel Proust "And then God said, 'let there be sexy people!' so he made Colombians"-Unknown, Pinterest. Colombia: A Few Things You Probably Don't Know From Seeing Narcos Drugs, war, violence, and Pablo Escobar. These are the things that a lot of my American friends really see in the media about my country, Colombia. In fact, a lot of times these are the ONLY things they actually see in the media. With the recent release of the Netflix original, Narcos , it seems to me that drugs are the only thing people mention when you say that you are from Colombia. In fact, I've had a teacher ask me once how bad my situation was when I lived in Colombia, in front of my whole class! To a proud Colombian who lived all over the country for 11 years, this is not only ins...

Quote of the week: “The knowledge of the world does not reside in the minds of old men, but in old books.”  Rafael Martinez You have heard it before. Your Spanish or French teachers have always tried to emphasize how "important" it is to learn a new language. They talk about the writing skills, the "great expansion" of vocabulary that you get, and the importance of communicating with the people of other cultures. Sure. That's something that you get when you learn a new language. However, I would argue that being bilingual isn't important because of any of these things. click for link to image credit I would say being bilingual is so much more than that. Being bilingual opens your world to a new way of understanding things. Not just through talking to other people, but also through reading. When I was about three, my mother gave me a book of short stories in Spanish from the famous author Rafael Pombo. These were children's books that c...