Introduction: My Background and Motivations for this Podcast.

And I'll also be talking about news, history, and things like that. So a little bit of everything. I'll also be having guests on my show from time to time, friends of mine, people that I think are interesting, etc. But for now it will be a solo mission. I will be translating words, sentences, or expressions that are maybe a bit more difficult, but for the most part, this will be a free-flowing show.

In the sense that I won't really be stopping to tell you how to use specific verb tenses, tiempos verbales, and I also won't necessarily stop to give you rules about grammar either. So if you're looking for those things specifically, I recommend that you get a book on grammar because there are thousands.

There are some really, really good ones out there, but if you're interested in just practicing your English and improving your listening skills, right, your listening ability while listening to me talk about a wide range of topics, then this is the show for you. However, however, I also don't want to condition my show from the beginning, because if I want to explain something grammar related, right, something about grammar, I might. I might do it. Okay. Puede que lo haga.

Another disclaimer, this show maybe isn't for the complete beginner. Right. If you're listening to this show, then you probably already have a certain level of English. And if you don't understand every single thing I say, don't worry. Alright, with a little bit of time and practice, I'm sure you will. Okay? So patience. So if you think you'll get something from this show, that you'll get something from this show, then great. That makes me happy.

But if it just creates stress for you, right, if it stresses you out, then no worries. Come back when you're ready. So let's get into it, I guess. Let's start. You are listening to the first episode ever of English with Dane. Hit it. And now I'm used to it. So here we are. I think it was my friend Brian who first called me that. So shout out to Brian if you're listening. By the way, if you're unfamiliar with the word shout out, it's like un saludo, right?

Let me talk to you a little bit about my background. Alright, let me tell you a little bit about my life experience so you understand where I come from and also where I'm coming from. Because although they sound really similar, where I come from and where I'm coming from mean two different things in terms of practical use. So really quickly, where I come from versus where I'm coming from. Where I come from is maybe my nationality, right? My cultural background or heritage.

It's maybe where I've grown up, donde he crecido, where my family's from, etc. And where I'm coming from means my perspective on something, right? The momentum behind my ideas. I can use it in a sentence something like, I want to understand where you're coming from, which means I want to understand the motivation or the perspective of the point you are making, right? The nature of your argument or ideas, let's say.

It means I want to know what you're thinking and why you're thinking it, as opposed to wanting to know where you were born or where you grew up. Okay, so small difference in terms of words, but a big difference in terms of how we use those two phrases. So I'm from Peru, from Lima, or Peru in English. So shout out to Peru, the country with the best food in the world. And I welcome anyone to try and change my mind. So good luck with that. I understand I'm a little bit biased, right?

To be biased is ser un poco parcial a algo. Okay. But I also have friends from different corners of the world who share that opinion, who have the same opinion. So, you know, deal with it. So I'm from Peru, but I grew up in the United States. Right? My family moved there when I was five years old, and we lived in Maryland, so East Coast, for those of you who aren't experts on geography. So Maryland.

And I lived there from the mid to late 90s, and I had the opportunity to experience the aspects of suburban life in the United States that you see in most kids' movies from that time, which was great. That's where I learned to ride a bike, that's where I learned to play different sports. I met a bunch of great people, but I guess most importantly, that's where I learned how to speak English. Until then, I only spoke Spanish.

So I had the benefit of being thrown into an English speaking school at a very young age. I was five years old. Remember, don't say five years. You either say five years old or I was five. But don't say I was five years. Okay, that's not something we say, and it sounds it sounds terrible. I know in Spanish we say tenia cinco años, but you know, things are different in different languages, okay, and we just have to get used to them. I would recommend just saying I was five.

And you can avoid the whole problem. Okay, back to what I was saying. So I had the benefit of being thrown into an English speaking school, right? To be thrown into something means to be quickly and suddenly put in a certain position, right? Ser arrojado, if you want a literal translation. So at the time it didn't really feel like a benefit.

I don't remember that much about being five years old, but I do remember the fear and miedo, the fear and the discomfort of being in an environment in which I didn't understand the things people were saying. An environment in which I couldn't communicate. And that fear, that discomfort, made me learn really, really fast. I mean, I didn't have a choice, right? But I remember that discomfort, and it's something I still experience today in other areas of my life, and I'm sure you do too.

I also learned really fast because I was five or five years old. And if there's something five-year-olds are really good at, it's learning, right? Kids learn really fast. They're really good at learning and absorbing concepts subconsciously most of the time, especially when it comes to language, but we'll talk about that in the future. More stuff. So we lived in the United States for around five years, and when I was ten or so, we moved back to Lima, back to Peru.

And this was um a very strange experience as well. So moving to the United States was strange, but also moving back to Peru was very strange. So I was a ten-year-old Peruvian kid moving back to Peru. So you would think it was a normal situation. But my English at this point was better than my Spanish. My Spanish was fine, right? I've always been a native Spanish speaker. But I only spoke Spanish at home with my parents and my brother. I have an older brother, by the way.

But even with him, I would use a lot of English. Even now, to this day, most of our communication is in English, which is a little bit strange, I guess. But I always felt that I could communicate better in English. I felt like I couldn't be myself as much in Spanish. I mean I could, and it was never really a big problem for me, but I always felt that English was the language in which I could say exactly what I wanted to say, and in the way I wanted to say it.

Right, like I could be myself one hundred percent, and in Spanish I was only myself ninety-six percent, although now it's very close to one hundred. But at that time, when I was ten years old, it really wasn't. So, the first day of school in Lima, let me take you back a little bit. It was kind of a traumatic experience in a way, but also a great experience. Now, I'm probably exaggerating when I say traumatic, but it did leave an imprint, right? It did leave a mark.

So, first of all, my brother was supposed to walk me to my class, right, but he didn't. To walk someone means accompanying. He was supposed to walk me to my class, but he didn't. So we walked into school and he was like, okay, see you later. Which wasn't great. But now that I think about it, it was maybe worse for him. Because if I was ten years old, that means that he was thirteen years old.

And if there's something more stressful than being a new student at a new school when you're ten years old, it's probably being a new student at a new school when you're thirteen years old. So it's all good. No hard feelings. Hard feelings are resentimentos. So why am I telling you all of this? Well, because that's what I wanted to talk about on today's episode a little bit.

Aside from giving you some background about myself, I wanted to talk about discomfort and the stress that it brings, because I think it's a really important part of the learning process, right? When learning a language, when learning anything, I guess. But it's especially important when learning a language. It's something I think you need to go through. Algo por lo que tienes que pasar, or tienes que atravesar, if you want. It's necessary in order to get to a higher place, to a higher level.

I'll talk about this more in a bit. Back to the story. So we walked into school, and I was left to figure it out for myself. I was left to fend for myself. So I followed the kids that seemed to be my age. That seemed to be my age, and I got to the classroom area, and I knew that I was in fifth grade or whatever it was, and I saw that there were two classes. So I walked into one of them, right? Una de yes, one of them. I was so, so nervous that I didn't check if it was my class or not.

I didn't see a list or a sign or anything like that. But I also really didn't look for one. I wasn't aware. So I figured, Bense, I figured, whatever, it's probably this one. Classic ten-year-old way of thinking. So I walked in, I opened a desk, because we had these desks that opened upwards, right? And I started to put all of my books in there. And when I finished, I sat down and I waited for the rest of the kids to finish. Then the teacher came in and started going through the list.

She started going through the list. She started checking if everyone was present. And she didn't say my name. She said everyone else's name, but not mine. Everyone else had that moment of validation, you know? That moment where your name is called and you raise your hand and you say, Here. I'm here, me, right now, I'm present. And looking back, so in hindsight, looking back, I think that that does something for you. It's important for a 10-year-old to be recognized like that, maybe.

It's probably silly, and I'm definitely making a mountain out of a molehill, which means I'm exaggerating. But I don't know. Maybe there's something there. So everyone got that moment of validation, but not me. Instead, what I received was an extra dose of nervousness.

So then the teacher said, Me fato alguien, and I remember raising my hand slowly, hoping and wishing that someone else would also raise their hand, and that we would have a moment where we would look at each other and find comfort that we weren't the only people whose names weren't called. But it was just me. So then she said, That means what's your name for those of you who don't speak Spanish. So I said, Daniel, Daniel Rivarola.

And she looked through her list and said, Hmm, it looks like you're not on the list. And then she asked me if I had tried, si había intentado, the other class, to which I replied, No, because I hadn't. So then she said, Well, I think you're actually in the other class. And I remember thinking, Yeah, of course I am. So I took all of my books out of my desk while everyone waited, mientras que esperaban, quietly sitting at their desks in the correct class.

And when I finished, which felt like forever, I left. So I walked to the other class, I knocked on the door, and I walked in and I saw twenty-five people staring at me. And I said to the teacher, excuse me, I think I'm in this class. And she said, Oh, okay. Well, find a desk, sit down, and let's start. So I walked through the rows, las filas. I walked through the rows filled with my future friends, crushes, and enemies, and I found an empty desk.

I opened it and I repeated the process of unloading or unpacking my books into it. I'm just kidding about the future enemies part, by the way. So then class started, and the teacher told us to open our notebooks and write the date, la fecha. And then she gave us some sort of writing assignment. She said something like, Write your goals for the year, right? Your objectives for the year, or write what you want this year to be, or something like that. So we did.

Then I started to hear my classmates talking to each other, and I remember thinking, wow, they sound so Peruvian. I know it's obvious, but I remember having that thought. I guess maybe I didn't know that many kids my age with Peruvian accents, specifically the Limeño accent. So I thought it was interesting. And I also remember thinking, damn, I hope I sound Peruvian too.

Anyway, as I was writing, the teacher came up to me, se me acercó, the teacher came up to me and said, Hey, I can't find your name on the list. Are you sure you're in this class? And I wasn't. I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything at that point. So I told her that the other teacher sent me, me mandó, sent me to this class because I wasn't on the other list. By the way, remember it's on the list, not in the list. Okay?

Anyway, she left the room for a few minutes, and when she came back, she said, Hey Daniel, turns out, turns out you were right the first time. You're actually in the other class. The teacher didn't have the new paper, right? The updated list. So once again, I stood up and took my books out of the desk and went back to the first class. And as I walked from one class to the other, I thought, oh man, this is gonna be so embarrassing.

I'm gonna walk in and everyone is gonna look at me and laugh at me, and this is going to be the worst. Lo peor, the worst. But then as I got closer to the door, I remember having a nice moment with myself. I remember thinking, you know what? F it. I don't care. I can't avoid it. I can't avoid it, so whatever. And I walked in, and you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. A few kids looked at me, and the teacher said, Hey, sorry, I didn't have the new list. Sit down, we're starting.

And it wasn't a big deal at all. All of those nerves and that anxiety of being outside of my comfort zone, thinking that everyone was judging me, that everyone was going to laugh at me. That was just in my head. And that taught me a valuable lesson, I think. And that lesson is that most of the time you're fine. And nobody is really thinking about you, and nobody remembers when something embarrassing happens to you. Maybe they remember if it's something really, really embarrassing.

But those general moments where you think something is really embarrassing, nobody is thinking about those moments. So going back to what I said before, one of the reasons I'm saying all of this, aside from telling you a little bit about myself, is because there's something that happens to 99% of my students. And that is that most of them don't want to speak English in front of other people. Right? They don't want to speak English outside of class.

It's the number one thing that stops my students from practicing, from improving. They get nervous, they get self conscious. They freeze and they avoid it. It's not the actual language part that they're afraid of because I think inside they know they can communicate. It's the fear of someone judging you or laughing at you, the fear of someone looking at you in a funny way. So the biggest roadblock, the biggest obstacle to improving your English is that discomfort that I was talking about before.

We don't want to feel that stress. We don't want to feel that discomfort. But the more you do it, the faster you'll improve. And also you'll stop feeling that stress. You'll feel it a little bit, but it goes away very quickly. You need to have that moment where you say, Whatever, I don't care what other people think. And I think it's easy once you realize that nobody is walking around living their lives thinking about you and thinking about your embarrassing moments.

And I think it's very liberating to realize that. Okay, enough with a self-help speech. So after a few years of living in Peru in Lima, we moved to Madrid, where I currently reside, where I currently live. I was 13 when we moved. We moved just when the currency changed, La Moneda, from the peseta to the Euro. So I had maybe two months of pesetas. So that means that this was towards the end of 2001. This time though, adapting to a new school was way easier.

Not only because I had more experience, but because this new school would be entirely or completely in English. I started teaching kids ages six through seventeen. And not long after that, I started teaching adults as well. And I have a lot of stories about both ambos. But I'll share those with you another day. For now, we're gonna stop here. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at English with Dane. And don't forget to subscribe to the show on Spotify, iTunes, or YouTube.

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