Hola!

My name is Leila. I am originally from Kazakhstan and live in Canada.

My three reasons why I want study spanish in colombia:

Firstly, I am very curious in discovering the culture of this beautiful country from the inside. Moving to Canada gave me a chance to make friends among Colombians. I mean, how can you not make friends with one of the friendliest nations? Being born and raised on the other side of the world I was very surprised when I discovered how many similarities we had. Valuing family and friends more than anything, putting emphasis on education, and loving to cook are among them. My friends and I attended various Colombian events like el Día de la Independencia, el Día de las Velitas, etc. There I was introduced at the first time to their energetic music, variety of dances, and delicious national food. I feel like being in their company allowed me to open up and become more sociable and approachable. I met many nice and kind people among Colombians and that is why I would want to know more about their mentality and lifestyle.

Secondly, I love Colombian accent. And I love learn new languages. That is why my background is in linguistics and I have been working as a translator for several years. Having learned English and French (and constantly striving to perfect my language prowess) I recently decided to start to learn Spanish. Having friends from several Latin American countries and hearing them speaking with different accents and dialects taught me to distinguish a bit among the dialects. The most pleasantly sounding to me was the accent from Colombia. To be more precise, when I hear people from Medellin, it seems as if they are singing out the words! Being a self-learner of Spanish, and learning it mostly from the books I do not have any particular accent while trying to speak. Therefore, I would really want to acquire the basics of speaking the language in a Colombian way as well as to be able to include it in the array of my language skills.

Finally, another reason is Colombian dance and music. For the last two years I have been taking salsa classes (Los Angeles salsa style). While attending many salsa events I have noticed that Colombian salsa was different and engaged a lot of footwork. I was really impressed by how fast it was and how easy it looked when the people (even the kids!) were dancing it. I got interested in learning their way of salsa as well as other types- cumbia and vallenato. Together with my love for dance goes my love for music. After listening to salsa, I got interested in reggaeton and bachata as well. I like dancing to the music of Shakira, Carlos Vives, Juanes, J Balvin and Maluma. Their songs help me picking up many new words and expressions.

Having an opportunity to study Spanish in Medellin would be a great way of getting to know all the things I was curious about in one of the most beautiful cities of Eternal Spring.

Gracias por darme la oportunidad de participar en la competición.

Leila Sharipkulova

This article was originally written in English