After driving to Phoenix to visit our daughter for a brief winter vacation, Kim and I then flew East, to the tiny Bahamian island of Abaco.  We’ve been there many times, as it is one of our favorite places in the world.  Where Phoenix is desert dry and brown, with the only thing we love about it being Eve, our daughter, the Bahamas is a group of islands that is totally delightful.  We began going there because of the water, but have gone back over and over again because of the pure pleasure of being amongst what has to be the kindest, happiest group of people we’ve ever met.

Lush and Lovely

The Bahamian Flag

Surf's Up at Treasure Cay Beach

Day After a Storm - Treasure Cay Beach and the Bahama Beach Club

This particular group of islands, the Abacos, was settled about 250 years ago by Loyalists from America.  They were on the British side of the Revolutionary War, and wanted to remain loyal to the crown. When it was no longer possible to remain in America and be a loyal British subject, this group relocated to the Abacos, bringing their African slaves, who were later emancipated, with them.  These descendants of these same people, white Abaconians and black Abaconians, have remained on these tiny islands ever since, forging a very distinctive society for themselves.

Abaconian Accents

One thing I find so interesting and charming about Abaconians is their accent.  They all speak English, however the English spoken by white Abaconians differs greatly from that spoken by black Abaconians.  As far as I can tell, the Island of Abaco is more integrated than most parts of the United States.  People live together, work together, and speak with each other every day.  And yet these two groups continue to speak English with completely different accents after 250 years of living in the same tiny place.

White Abaconians speak with a kind of flat, half Boston, half British accent.  It is very distinctive, yet easily understood by any English speaker.  No matter what the situation, or how rapid the speech, I can understand it as easily as I can understand any west coast American speech.  Although inflections differ, the music and rhythm of the speech is classic English.

Black Abaconians, however, sound completely different.  One of the most charming aspects of Bahamians is the lilting, musical sound of their speech.  There is laughter and kindness in the sound.  There is a song in every sentence.  It is a beautiful thing to hear.

The interesting thing, to me, is that it is a very easy speech to understand most of the time.  Clearly, though, it has a different beat from common American English or British English, and when Bahamians choose not to be understood, when they increase the pace of their conversations, when they clip their words a little more closely, when they don’t enunciate quite so clearly, it is impossible for me, a teacher of language, skilled in comprehension of heavily accented speech, to understand anything.

The Musicality of a Language

In previous posts I have discussed the musicality of a language, and how it impacts comprehension.  Here is an incredible example of it, within my own native language of English.  The very thing that makes Bahamian English so charming is what also can make it impossible for even an English speaker to understand.

Some of our clients at the Lake Tahoe Institute of English are too worried about improving their American accents so that no one will know they are not a native speaker of the language.  Not only is this nearly impossible for an adult, it is, in my opinion, not a good idea.  Accents in English are charming.  We Americans love a foreigner, especially one who speaks good English.  An accent is appealing, so long as it is understandable.

What speakers of English as a second language should strive for is pronouncing sounds in such a way that they can be understood by other speakers of English, whether it be their first or second language.  We just need you to be understandable to us, not to be American (or British, or whatever).  Master most of the sounds, and, most of all, master the rhythm of the language.  Then you will be understood.

Well, Kim and I have just returned from our winter break from the Lake Tahoe Institute of English.  It was great to get away for a little while.  When you work where you live, it can be difficult to relax sometimes, so going completely away is what is called for.

Living at Lake Tahoe in the winter is incredibly beautiful, but when we have too many storms in a row, we can all feel the need to get away and get some sun.  So, Kim and I headed south on Highway 395 to Phoenix to visit our daughter, Eve.  We’ve only driven this route before in the spring and summer, so this was a very new experience for us.  After leaving Tahoe, the road fairly quickly begins to hug the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.  If you are not familiar with the Sierra Nevada, it is a very rugged mountain range that runs nearly the length of California, and into Nevada a bit, too.  Incline Village, Nevada, where we live, is on the western slope of the Sierra.

On the western side of the mountains it is less rugged, with more trees and greater snowfall.  The eastern side is very barren, rocky and dramatic.  Highway 395 winds along beside these mountains through beautiful high mountain valleys, alongside lakes and through high desert landscapes.  In the spring and summer the valleys are filled with wildflowers, and the mountainsides are carpeted, from a distance anyway, with greenish-purplish foliage.  As you drive you pass by small towns and ranches; it is truly representative of the old west from the movies.

Winter Transformation

In the winter, though, it is quite a different scene.  All is covered with a light layer of snow, cold and windswept.  The sky, too, is a cold, cold blue.  Snow clings to the craggy mountains, highlighting their ruggedness.  It is a grand landscape, with great beauty in the desolation of the desert, the frozen and misty lakes, and the high, wild mountains.

It is a 12 hour drive from Incline Village to Phoenix, Arizona, and I was reminded during the long day of driving just how easy it is to travel enormous distances in the United States.  And, I was reminded of the enormous contrasts of the western United States.  In one day, we transported ourselves from the beauty of Lake Tahoe, all glistening water and snow-covered pine trees, through a desolate and dramatic mountain and desert landscape into a great desert city that takes 2 hours to drive across.  We transported ourselves from a frozen world, into eternal summer, with a day long drive.  That alone is an adventure.

Mono Lake Covered with Mist

Ranch on the Eastern Slope of the Sierra

Baby, it's cold outside

Kim and I have always been travelers, before we met each other, and together for the past 30 something years. 

In fact, the day I met Kim, back in 1978, he told me about his recent travels to South America with his friends (and now mine), Jim  and Bob.  He told me all about going to Colombia and staying with Bob’s family, then on to Peru, where he stayed with a family in the jungle for a week.  His stories, more than even his gorgeous blue eyes, are what kept me coming back. 

The Most Important Things I’ve Learned

I can tell you that many of the most important things I’ve learned in life have come during travel – from my first experience in Morocco at 18, to an amazing trip to post-war Nicaragua in 1990, to a day in the war museum in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2005. 

My eyes have been opened, time and time again, to the essential differences between us, as well as the essential sameness of us all.  When at home in the U.S., it is difficult to know the water I swim in, but when away, I am forced to look outside my own fishbowl, and also to look back to it from the outside in.  In short, I see the world, and my place in it, very differently for having actually seen the world.

My experiences interacting with the world outside the United States have shaped my views on nearly everything, make me who I am, and, I think, make me a far more compassionate, tolerant, and, hopefully, wise person. 

Conscious Travel

Of course, I’m not a Sheraton/Intercontinental Hotel kind of person.  I’m not much of a cruise goer, and all-inclusive resort participant.  Kim and I like to find our own hotels, small and out of the way.  We stay in pensiones, we even stay in youth hostels (at our age!).  It’s fun.  We like to dine around the corner, off the main square tourist haunts.  We take buses and taxis and trains.  We walk a lot.  We talk to people everywhere – locals and other travelers alike.  

We make lots of mistakes, get ourselves into trouble, get lost, and make lots and lots of friends.  In the risk is the adventure.  One of the things we love most about travel is the constant feeling of being off-balance.  We’re always looking and wondering what’s going on, and what things mean. 

We try to read as much as we can about where we’re visiting, so that we have some kind of historical and cultural context to put things into.  Every trip, even if it is to a beautiful beach, is about learning something. 

We have always tried to be conscious travelers, as it makes our experience far richer, and we have always opined that if more people in the U.S. would travel, we would have very different policies, both foreign and domestic. 

Read This Book!

Yesterday, I finished reading an excellent book by Rick Steves, the travel writer.  Called Travel as a Political Act, he has managed to articulate exactly how I feel about being a conscious traveler, and the value it brings to my life, my country, and my world.  He, and I, urge you to travel more, travel widely, travel consciously, and travel reflectively. 

What a better world we would have if we could all see that our similarities and differences are merely the front and the back of the same hand.  What a better world if we would use what we know about the world to inform our political and personal choices, and not pretend that our own fishbowl is the only one there is.

There can be no argument, all travel is a political act.  Let’s be very careful what politics we espouse with that act.  Let’s be very careful to make it count in the way we want it to count.  Let’s use it to make this a better, safer, more peaceful and just world.

Have they been into our dinner again?

For Those Who Like to Eat

 No, for you neighbors who are reading this, and you know who you are, it is not the story about the time Rosie and Marlowe (the puppies, in case you haven’t met them yet), got on the table and ate the salad while we all sat on the deck and finished probably one too many cocktails. 

No, this is about where I first ate the salad, and how I came to re-invent the recipe for it.

My Mexican Family

A lot of years ago, I spent several weeks studying immersion Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico.  This place was more like a school, with a campus and hour long classes on various topics.  As part of the program, students stayed with a local family, whose job it was to feed you and speak to you in Spanish whenever you were in their house. 

I heard many horror stories from other students, but I was incredibly lucky with my “family.”  What a dose of culture I got! 

My family consisted of a round, happy, beautiful mama, a young twenty-something daughter with a handsome and fun fiance, an hysterically funny late twenty-something divorced daughter, and her dance-crazy 8 year old daughter. 

Oh, and then there was the papa, who had moved out of the house to live with his young girlfriend, but who came home every Sunday afternoon to have dinner with his family.

There Will Be Music and Dancing

During the week, it was a non-stop party at the house.  There was a constant flow of friends and neighbors, unending talk, delicious food, and every single night, it seemed, there was music and dancing. 

Everyone was so kind to me, always including me in the talk, as if I understood, and making me feel most welcome.  It was easy and wonderful to join in the laughter with these gregarious people.  They even taught me to salsa (laughing at me the whole time, with my wooden American hips).  In reciprocation, I taught them to do American swing.  Yeah, their hips were as bad as mine when they tried to swing.

On Sunday, though, it was a different story.  Papa came home in the afternoon, and waited silently for dinner to be served.  He had his beer as he waited, but no one else had one (unlike the rest of the week). 

Oh, it was a very serious business.  Each of the “children” reported on their activites of the week, but there was no laughing, no chatter, no dancing.  It was a very quiet affair.

Papa ruled the roost on Sunday.  He stayed until about 8 PM, and, having done his duty, went on home to his young sweetie. 

Then the party began again.  The music came on, the neighbors came over, the beers were opened, and the dancing started up once again, to welcome the new week.

On the first Sunday that I was there, Mama made a beautiful salad for dinner.  It was made of local lettuces, sliced boiled potatoes, sliced onions, hard-cooked eggs, a variety of vegetables, and the most delicious beef slices that had been simmered all day in a secret sauce.  It was all arranged on a very large platter in beautiful layers.  Fabulous! 

The Salad, In Translation

When I got home, I decided to try to make the salad.  I had forgotten to ask for the recipe, and it was before the days of email, so I couldn’t just write and ask. 

Oh well, I thought I’d just wing it.  First, I had no idea how to do the beef.  So, I thought I’d substitute roast chicken for beef.  Then there was the matter of the vegetables.  I couldn’t remember what all had been on the salad, so I just added what I love. 

Finally, there was the matter of the dressing.  Hmmmm.  Well, I have long used a secret dressing first given to me by my friend, Chris Cogen.  Of course, she just told me how to do it one time at a party, so how I actually make it probably bears no resemblance to how she made it.  But I give her credit, nonetheless. 

So, below is “Boni’s Famous Chicken Salad,” along with, for the first time ever, my secret salad dressing. 

Naturally, as those of you who know how I cook know, many things have been changed in the translation of these recipes, as I rarely cook the same way twice.  And, I expect you will also change things in your own translation. 

Buen provecho!

Boni’s Famous Chicken Salad

Oh, another note before I start.  My favorite recipe for turkey stuffing comes from The Joy of Cooking.  After listing the ingredients, the author gleefully states “proportions are of little importance, as the stuffing is always delicious.”  The same is true for this salad.  It is always delicious.

Ingredients:

Some kind of crunchy lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces.

Several boiled potatoes, sliced.  I use small red potatoes. 

Six or seven sliced hard-cooked eggs.

A roasted chicken, torn into bite-sized pieces.  I purchase one at the supermarket.

A red onion, or sweet yellow onion, sliced into thin rings.

Sliced rings of sweet red pepper.

Sliced rings of green pepper.

A couple of sliced tomatoes.

A couple of sliced avocados.

Arrange these in layers on a large platter, beginning with the lettuce, then potatoes, then eggs, then chicken.  Arrange the vegetables in beautiful layers however it appeals to you.  I always end with the red peppers and avocados, because it makes the salad so gorgeous.  Over this, drizzle my secret salad dressing.

Secret Salad Dressing – feel free to improvise, as this is always an improvisation on my part.

Good quality extra-virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar.  I usually use about a cup and a half (about 375 ml) of oil to 3/4 cup (about 185 ml) of vinegar.  In any case, it is a 2 to 1 proportion.

A couple of cloves of peeled garlic.

About 1/3 cup, or 75 ml, of mayonnaise.

A large handful of fresh grated Parmesan cheese.

Salt, fresh ground pepper, and whatever other spices you like to taste.  You can also add anchovies for Caesar Salad.

Chop the garlic gloves in a blender, then add oil and vinegar and blend.  Add the mayonnaise and blend some more.  Add the Parmesan cheese, and blend again.  Add the spices to taste.  If you are adding anchovies, add them with the oil and vinegar.  You won’t regret this dressing!

Trees on the upper Flume Trail

Exercise on Birdie Way

My Favorite Tree

Tahoe is a place of quickly changing and highly variable weather.  It can snow in the middle of summer, it can rain in the middle of winter.  We have more sun than is probably decent, with accompanying indecently blue skies.  Sometimes it just takes your breath away to look up into the deep, deep blue.  It is a very happy place.  But a changeable place.

Fall is a great time of year around here.  The nights are cold, but the days are plenty warm to play.  you might still need a sweater, and you won’t be going in the water, but still, it is generally very pleasant to be outdoors.  We’ve had 3 snows already this year, so maybe it will be an early winter.  It is common, though, to have the occasional snow between September and December, when winter really sets in.

Yesterday, Kim and I walked the nature loop up in the meadows, which many of you are familiar with.  Everything is shades of gold, from the grass to the trees.  There is plenty of water in the streams and marshy areas, so all is lush and beautiful. 

As we walked around the upper end of the loop, we startled a herd of deer grazing in the meadow.  They took off at a run, crossing the trail directly in front of us.  I wish I had had my camera, so that I could share it with you.

This month is prime bicycling month, too.  Not too hot, not too cold, and breathtaking views.  Today Kim is riding the upper Flume Trail with our son, Cole.  I’ll get a full report later.  Why am I sitting here working?

Now, at the beginning of November, I am sitting in my office looking out the window.  The sky is that lovely, deep blue.  The aspen trees are bright gold, and are shimmering in the breeze.  It looks like a wonderful day.

But wait!  As I am looking out, I see flakes of something in the air.  I can’t believe it.  It’s snowing!  And it’s sunny!  And it’s 30 degrees!  Only in Tahoe!  I’d better put on a pot of coffee for when the boys return.  They’re going to need it!

As they say around here:  “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 5 minutes.  It will change.”

I’ve been terrified of learning another language for a very long time.  It started with my first trip to Europe, after having studied French in high school.  As I traveled throughout France with my friend, who had a French grandmother, and so was fluent in French, I could not understand a single word of real spoken French.  I knew language wasn’t my strong suit, but, after all that study, this was ridiculous.

I could see how much richer an experience my friend had as we traveled, because she could talk to people, and understand everything that was going on around her.  I, on the other hand, had to rely on her interpretation, or remain in ignorance.  I was very, very frustrated, but was determined to learn the language, so that I could participate fully in my own travels.

So, I studied French in college, even getting a minor degree in it.  I knew lots of grammar, and could read and write it very well.  The trouble was, I still couldn’t speak it.  And, as I now had entered the working world, I didn’t have the opportunity to travel to France again for a long time. 

Too Old???

Given my situtation, I thought I would try to learn Spanish.  After all, even if I couldn’t go to Europe, I could easily get to Mexico, where I could practice.  Of course by then, I was pretty old.  I was 35, I think.  They say if you’re not a kid, you can’t learn another language. 

Not to be deterred by age, I went back to school and studied Spanish, taking two full years of language courses.  I could, once again, read and write, but couldn’t speak.  We did speak in class, but that isn’t real speaking.  Anytime I was confronted with someone speaking Spanish, I would just freeze.  I couldn’t understand it, and I couldn’t even think how to reply.  I felt that I would never be able to learn.

New Language Learning Theories

The newest second language learning theories say I learned all wrong.  Grammar, drills, worksheets, vocabulary lists to memorize – the theory is now that none of this will teach you to understand and speak a language.  It isn’t at all about age, it’s about the type of learning.

Well, duh!  I could have told them that.  It is completely intuitive that being immersed in a language is the best way to learn it.  That’s how we learn our first language as children, and that is also the best way to learn a second language.  Learning grammar and vocabulary teaches us about a language, but it doesn’t teach us to think in a language, or to speak a language.

The problem is that most people don’t have the opportunity to be immersed in a language, and most schools don’t have the facilities to immerse people in it.  Usually, schools have an hour a day, or maybe several hours at a time once or twice a week.  It is just too difficult, and too outside the box of traditional learning, to do much more than teach grammar and provide worksheets and drills.  And, all too often, the instructors don’t really speak the second language well.

Total Immersion is Best

If you are really determined to learn English, and it is at all possible for you, the best way to speed your language learning , and learn English well, is to totally immerse yourself in it.  Not a few hours a day, or 20 or 30 hours a week, but fully immerse yourself.  Be completely surrounded by English, and be prepared to speak and learn.  Remove all opportunities to speak your native language.  You need to eat, drink, sleep and breathe in English.

At the Lake Tahoe Institute of English, we have turbo charged all the latest techniques for learning a second language.  Total immersion in the language, in a secure and safe environment, makes it possible for adults to learn to understand and speak English quickly.  Plus, we teach you exactly the English you want to know, and we have fun while doing it.  No anxiety, just learning.