[2023-04-14] Feeding two birds with one scone
Today's language lesson with my neighbour was done on foot. She and I went for a walk in the neighbourhood while chatting in English and Brazilian Portuguese. It was a good option because my head cold hadn't completely cleared up, so being outdoors was the safest bet. (Incidentally, I took a COVID test just to be sure it wasn't a more serious illness, and it was negative.)
Whenever I combine two activities that are often done separately, I feel like I've found time. My daughter calls this "feeding two birds with one scone," which I like much better than the more violent "killing two birds with one stone."
In the past, I did mentoring sessions over the phone while walking to work and continued the practice of walking meetings after I retired. More recently, I have been listening to an English-Portuguese vocabulary e-book while cleaning my house and falling asleep.
The only disadvantage to doing a learning session while walking is that it's more difficult to take notes. To address this challenge, after I returned home, I made a list of all the words that had come up in our conversation that were new for one or the other of us (at least all the ones I could remember). Today's list included retirement, creek, path, puppy, broken and maple syrup.
But the advantages of a walking lesson far outweigh the disadvantages. We got to spend time outdoors, in nature, discovering our community, and talking—in part—about things that came up on the walk, such as why English people sometimes say "morning" instead of "good morning," how difficult it is to pronounce the word squirrel and what the Brazilian Portuguese word is for cattail.
