Jian Sakakeeny is a student remembered by everyone at school Nueva Lengua. She is from China, she is 62 years old and currently lives in the United States. She is a woman of passions, who enjoys cooking, dancing and, of course, languages. A lover of learning something every day, Jian made it her personal project to study Spanish and manage it fluently in just 10 years: she began her studies in 2015 and will finish in 2025.

He speaks several languages, such as Japanese, French, and Latin, and due to his closeness to the latter, he decided to dedicate himself to the study of Spanish. In addition to having had grammar classes during the pandemic with a teacher from the Dominican Republic, Jian used different applications, listening to audios, consulting the news and reading transcripts to enrich his vocabulary and improve his comprehension.

After getting the grammar basics of the language, Jian decided that her main goal would be to practice more expressions, popular sayings, and be faster when engaging in a conversation in Spanish. Therefore, when hearing about Nueva Lengua, she knew that this was the right place to meet her goals at the highest level; Our school seeks that its students not only learn Spanish but also perfect it through immersion and direct contact with the culture.

Through her travels, Jian seeks exotic experiences, and she does this not only through language but also through the gastronomic world, since cooking for her is an art, a form of expression. One of the hosting methods we offer at Nueva Lenguaheh is the possibility of staying with a local host family; Thus, during her stay in Bogotá, Jian lived with a family that gave her space and the opportunity to cook, they accompanied her to the market places and helped her buy all the necessary ingredients for her dishes.

During his stay he felt like part of the family and part of the Colombian culture. Jian herself sees herself as an interesting person, kind and open to others, and she felt the same about most of the people she met in Bogotá, she was just another Colombian. In turn, speaking Spanish was for her one of the most important things to do in Colombia, because, according to what she told us, living in an English-speaking country makes it difficult for her to practice.

Jian has shown that the main thing in learning a language is to be open to possibilities. Thanks to social networks, he has been able to make contact with friends from all over Latin America, with whom he can constantly practice his communication. WhatsApp and Facebook have become big during the process of him.

Literature is also one of his main topics of interest. In Nueva Lengua we offer workshops on Latin American literature, so Jian had the great opportunity to read one of the most important authors in Colombia, the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. In class it was possible to work on two important works by the author: Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow (1976). And although these are not easy texts, reading them meant a lot to her since they reminded her of a choreography that she did based on Shakira's soundtrack for the film adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera (2007). This literary approach allowed him to see different rhetorical figures of Spanish and images that the author works on.

Definitely, Jian is an example that wanting is power. Having the disposition is the perfect sign that the objectives can be achieved; his discipline is incredible and has allowed him to learn various skills throughout his life. Knowledge is one of the great riches of the world, and a great way to access it is through the language, since Spanish is not just a system of signs but a world of infinite meanings, emotions, senses, and experiences.