improve my Indonesian

Ok, time to fess up. I didn’t go through the book at all during this whole summer. You know how it is, things keep coming up and other times I just wanna relax.
But hey, it’s no big deal for me to set it aside for a while. School is gonna start soon and maybe it’ll encourage and get me in the mood to pick this up, but for now it’s taking a back seat.

It’s the “Teach ourself Indonesian” audio pack. I skimmed through it a bit and I’m pretty happy with the book’s format and how the lessons go. Tomorrow would be a good time to start.

My parents are both from Indonesia (Chinese ancestry, however) but moved to the US right before I was born. Although both of them knew Indonesian very well, they didn’t really teach me anything beyond the basics. Considering that there are very few people in the US (even in NYC!) who are familiar with the language, I slowly lost my grasp of the language as time wore on.

These days however, I want to learn and master the language to at least be able to speak and write it on a professional level. Since the language is not well-known, I can use it to give me an advantage over the competition when it comes to jobs and careers. Plus I also want to be able to easily communicate with my relatives in Indonesia.

I’m looking through some books to help me learn the language.

A couple of months ago I bought a book, Indonesian for beginners, and today I finally started on it! I did lesson 1, and I might do lesson 2 as well today.
At this moment it’s still just recollecting the language, as a lot of it is still in my head from my youth. So it’s not really learning something new but more of an ‘aha-erlebnis’. If you know what I mean.
I think it’s also mostly a case of speaking the language again, so my Indonesian braincells get active again.

If I do stop with French lessons next semester, I might as well concentrate on my Indonesian. Especially if I indeed go to Indonesia in the summer. I have the books, I just need to put it actively on my to-do-list, plan it in in my weekly schedule or something.

I think I might have to put this on hold for a while. Too many other things on my mind, too many other things to do.

I’ve lived there for 14 years, for cryin’ out loud, so this wouldn’t be too hard? I still know some stuff, it’s just that I want to improve so I can actually speak it fluently again when I go back one day.
Well, the first step has been taken: I bought a book to teach myself. Haven’t actually started yet, but let’s take one step at the time! No need to rush into things!