When I walked down a street in Sofia, somebody stopped me in my tracks and said something to me that I did not understand. He was speaking n Bulgarian. It made me feel uncomfortable. I wish I could have said that I did not speak Bulgarian, but I couldn’t even say that.

When we were on the airplane from London to Bulgaria, I was terrified. What was I going to say to the woman beside me who was speaking in Bulgarian to me?  Luckily she was from London and spoke English too. When she said, “Oh, do you speak Bulgarian?” I said “No. Do you?”

She said, “A little bit. What’s your name?”

I said, “Bella. What’s yours?”

She said, “Niki.”

Then I felt brave, happy, and excited too, because she was going to teach me Bulgarian. She taught me how to say “hello” in Bulgarian. She said say “zdra-ve-te”, and I did. I’ve been in Bulgaria for six weeks now, and I’m still not good at speaking Bulgarian, but I’m getting the hang of it.

When you’re traveling you should learn some basic words because they will come in handy. I think it’s important to learn numbers, letters, and words like “hello”, “good-bye”, and “I don’t understand”.  I also think it is important to know how to say “thank you”. In Bulgarian thank you is “blah-goo-dar-ya”, but you can also say “merci”.  In Spanish thank you is “gracias”, in Portuguese it’s “obrigada (o)”, in Arabic it’s “chokran” ???? and in French it’s “merci”.

From The Big Field Trip – Tunisia, March, 2009

In Bulgaria it is important to know the head signals too. Shaking your head  from side to side means “yes” and nodding up and down means “no.” Learning this is very difficult. Once someone asked me if I understood Bulgarian, and I shook my head. So he kept on talking in Bulgarian.

When I got to Bulgaria, I did not know how to speak any Bulgarian except for what I learned from Niki. The hardest part about learning Bulgarian is they write very differently than we do. My name is spelled like this in Bulgarian ????e??!

I learned languages in many different ways. Mom has been speaking Spanish to me since I was born, so in Peru I was fine speaking in Spanish. My understanding of Spanish helped me learn Portuguese in Brazil and Portugal because these two languages are very alike. When we went to Brazil, my family and I took Portuguese lessons. Cyrus and I took one lesson before Mama and Papa took another lesson. We took lessons from a professional young lady. Inãe was very patient and very nice. I even learned by reading books and listening to people on the sidewalks chattering to each other.

From The Big Field Trip – Brazil, December, 2008

I learned Arabic and French in Tunisia. I took lessons from a young lady named Fadoua, who taught us French. Sometimes she taught us arts and crafts because she was in college studying art. Yousef was a friend of ours from Tunisia who took us to the Sahara Desert. He spoke Arabic, French, English, and Italian, and taught us some Arabic.

From Bulgaria

I am learning the Cyrillic alphabet in Bulgaria. I listen to Bulgarian language podcasts with my family. My mom taught me how to say “goodbye”. You stay it like this “do-veezh-de-ne”. Both of my brothers have shirts that have the Cyrillic alphabet written on them. Mom quizzes us on the Bulgarian alphabet and animal names every day. I read signs on the streets. Ventzi, our Bulgarian teacher, has taught us names of animals. Bird is “petitza”. Now I can go to the grocery store and say “pet mlyako molya”. (They will give me five cartons of milk). There is still a lot more that I need to learn, but at least now I know how to say “ne razbirum Bulgarski”, which means “I don’t understand Bulgarian”. That gets me out of a lot of difficult situations.

From Bulgaria

I still have many languages to study, from Turkish to Hindi to Thai. I’ve got an adventure in front of me and lots to learn.  In the past year that we’ve been traveling I’ve felt scared of learning each new language, but now I know that I can learn to say some basic words and that will help me to communicate with people in tricky situations. Now I feel brave and excited to learn new languages.

We had been going on a tour all day. We were somewhere outside of Lencois, Brazil. We had been to Devil’s Hole, a pool so deep that its water looked black. If you held the water in your hands, it was brown. The pool wasn’t that big but it was hundreds of feet deep and there was a huge, steep waterfall feeding water into the pool. It had a steep zip line going into Devil’s Pool. People were flinging themselves off the waterfall and into space, and, instead of falling, they were yanked along by the zip line, like helpless kittens being kidnapped by an owl in a strong wind. There was no way I was going on that thing. I swam in the pool instead. I swam under the waterfall, which was a mistake because it pushed me underwater. It was fun, I did it again. Then we got into our guide’s car and continued our tour of Chapada Diamantina National Park.

From The Big Field Trip – Brazil, December, 2008

It was a really fun, adventurous day. I fed monkeys and ate many mangoes from the trees. I got within three feet of a viper with poison so deadly it could kill an adult in two hours. Its mouth was full of frog, but still. I got close to enough take good pictures, only backing off when my mom told me to. You don’t see one of those every day! I stuffed myself with Brazilian food from a buffet, which was delicious.  We went into a cave that looked like it was on the moon. There were no plants at all. My parents had to sign a slip that said it wasn’t their fault if anyone died. The cave was awesome! It had loads of stalactites and lots of alien insects like huge millipedes, blind grasshoppers, and tarantulas. I got as many close-up photos as I could, including a great one with Bella and a millipede. 

From The Big Field Trip – Brazil, December, 2008

Then we walked until we came to a crystal lake. It was very clear so we were going to snorkel. Then I heard the zip. It was another zip line. I could either climb down a 40 foot cliff or fly down the zip line, which cost 5 Reals (about 3 dollars). It went across the lake, almost, and landed in it. I decided to do it with my dad. It seemed like it would be fun. We paid and the owner strapped us to the zip line. I had on a harness, which was connected by a carabineer to a rope which was connected to the zip line (which made the zzzzzzzzz sound).

From The Big Field Trip – Brazil, December, 2008

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip! Splash, went my dad. My turn. Gulp. I walked to the edge of the plank, looked down at the dizzying drop, then jumped.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, went the line. I was flying!  I held on tight to the rope, being yanked all over (or so it seemed). My heart was in my throat and then my strength seemed to leave me. I couldn’t hold on any longer so I braced myself and then let go of the rope, expecting to fall into the shallow water a long way down. Nothing happened. I felt a huge jolt, but I was still moving through the air.  I looked up to see that I was connected to the zip line. Of course! Then something yanked my feet back. Ker-splash! I hit the water. I got up and unhooked myself. “I want to do that again!” I told my dad. 

From The Big Field Trip – Brazil, December, 2008

That was one of many times I was nervous about doing something, then realized it was OK and/or fun when I “let go of the rope”.  Whether it’s talking to someone in a foreign language or walking around town by myself, I find out its OK.