S. Becker from Berlin

[S. Becker]

Hello there

My name is Sama. I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but now live in Berlin, Germany. My mother tongue is English, as in standard English where we write colour instead of color! Growing up in South Africa was interesting and intense in good and bad ways. We have terrible violence and extreme poverty, but at the same time, incredible nature and interesting animals like the big 5 (elephant, leopard, lion,buffalo and Rhino) and the little 5 such as pangolin, cervals, jackals, fox and ground squirrels. We also have herds of Wildebees (gnu), crocodiles, sharks and whales.

South Africa has interesting insects. We have a general term for insects: 'gogos' - the 'g' pronounced in the gutteral Spanish way. We have swarms of termites, which have wings and fly during the rainy season, big buzzy moths, black beetles (called tok-tokkies), which knock on the ground to find a partner and large spiders. Amidst all this creeping, crawling, flying and running life lives a diverse population of people. We have 11 national languages,and many interesting traditions.

During my art studies in Cape Town, I met and married a Polish Geoscientist and together we have lived for the past 3 years in Berlin, Germany. Between us we speak 4 languages, although we speak English at home. I love writing, reading,music, German culture and art.

Berlin is a wonderful,vibrant,green city. Every neighbourhood and every street is different. There are trees everywhere and people cycle and walk a lot more than drive. Germans definitely care a lot more about the environment than back home.For us, the nature here is exotic. The trees and animals are so different to our native country. It took a while to learn German - a difficult language, but once I could speak confidently I started learning Polish and Spanish. We have Polish family living in Warsaw and we visit them often.

I have just completed a TEFL course in English and am very interested in seeing how people learn English.