If one day there are only three things left for me and unfortunately they are Sports, Singing and English, please kindly pass me that knife, let me end this misery life.

This was what I said to a friend a few years ago. Nobody can ever imagine how huge pain these three lovely things put in my neck. As a leo woman, I need extremly confidence to mask insecurity (Astrology, I don't believe, only agree on some analysis). Sports, singing and English are that three ruthless ravens lingering and sneering at my little sky, swallowing my confidence and drinking my fear. 

Gene teaches human avoid dangerous thing when it hurts or destroys confidence. I gave up sports after falling down from balance beam, hit by basketball, volleyball and pingpang ball -- luckily the last hurts less. I fall down when simply walking on streets, hit myself against wall edges, trees, desks, etc,.. No doubt that one day if I am finally bored with my clumsy, I may consider giving up walking too. 

Then it comes to that sweet thing -- Singing. A short summary: there are people who can't carry a tune in a bucket and there is no tune in my bucket. Like that famous encouraging quote: You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening. Yes, I do it, sing when there's nobody listening...

About English, your great language, only God knows how many times I want to give it up. However, I couldn't. Thanks to Chinese education system, it requests students pass English exams every half a year. I failed some in the beginning then passed them and managed to pass the last ones very well -- passing exam is only a skill, it never equals to learning and understanding. But all this pushes me even more far away from really enjoying English, because it is something you have to do not you want to do. Those tedious grammars, complicated words and indistinguishable pronunciations compose an endless river called suffer. As a person who don't swim (oh, you uncharitable sports!), get drowned, forget confidence and bury myself under this river seems to be a way of relief. 

Time comes to Sep. 2014. To be, or not to be. If I ever knew that English will become to this question in my life, I don't know whether I still have that courage to do a PhD abroad. Fortunately, I didn't realize it before leave China and had no choice in lovely and peaceful Leganes except learning English again and again. 

People learn languages by many ways, watching movies, no problem, watching American dramas, no problem, listening to talk show, no problem. However, it was really a torture when comes to reading.

God knows how muck I love reading, it was my only hobby for more than twenty years. Understand logic is not a problem when I read English books, but I see nothing about language beauty. It was like eating without tasty, you simply swallow words and sentence, store and digest them. From time to time I had to read Chinese book to compensate. But finally compressed information planted a seed, and recently, after two years, this seed broke through dark soil and brought me a little bit lively green in my English world. I feel I start to enjoy more and more delicate words and deep minds, subtle feelings and rational ideas described in English novels, articles and poems. Thanks to the people who encouraged me, they didn't know their kindly words are like night lamps bright my way to come here, especially when I was frustrated and depressed.

Now two ravens are still mourning, but I don't hate them anymore. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I may never good at sports or singing, but I learnt how to deal with imperfect life from them. It is quite useful for a people who is imperfect either.