learning English saved my life!

by Adele Aava

I didn't know I was building a mansion; I just laid the bricks!

I started learning English when I was a teenager. Living in a small, one-horse town in The Middle East that had nothing going for it, I barely had a better thing to do; there were not many bookstores or proper libraries around and computers, smart phones, and easy access to the internet was considered a luxury. Even if you had them, there were not many options available to choose from; so, finding the meaning of the new words, phrases and idioms you came across, was not a piece of cake.

A very small language community- which we tended to call an institute, out of the subconscious need to soothe our lack of access to learning facilities- was all I had to count on, and since I had a flair for art and languages, it suited me anyway.

My only educational tool was a bulky hardcover, English to English Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, which I carried to the institute nose-in-the-air, since I was an elementary student who had the nerve to use higher-level reference books ever since she got the ball rolling.

At first, it was a swine to get used to looking words up in a big dictionary like that; you had to spend a lot of time looking for the right index and finding the word you wanted among hundreds of others, and…