Isabel allende

Bilingual Profile
My parents have always been attracted by exotic places and new cultures. Since they got into the Italian Embassy their lives turned into nights spent in the airport waiting for a new start in a new city full of new adventures. Their job has always been their life, but the most difficult job in their lives was and still is taking care of my sister and me. The choices they madeduring these years have always had an impact on us and on our learning.
My parents’ mother tongue is Italian. Because of travelling they also have had to adapt to the different countries’ languages. My mother went for business to Moscow once, so she had to learn Russian and in those days she could easily have a chat with local people. Today, since she doesn’t have to speak that language anymore,she almost forgot it. Sometimes she remembers some words but nothing else. She knows conversational Spanish because five years ago she lived in Spain for a while so she learned it and now that we live in Venezuela she really needs it. Last of all, she knows some words in French because during the high school she attended some classes. When last summer when we went to Paris sometimes I was a littlebit embarrassed because she was trying to get her French back and talking French in such a way that most of the people couldn’t get her. I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but it was obvious to me and my family that her French couldn’t go further than a “Bonjour” or a “Merci”. On the other side, my dad can speak some words in French as well because of high school andconversational Spanish because in the past he had travelled in South American places so for his work and to survive outside the Embassy he had to learn it, too. The difference between him and my mother is that he doesn’t try to speak a language he admits he is not able to speak anymore.
Because of all this travelling in their lives I can say that I have their same passion. Since I was a nothingless than a child I always loved the smell of the seats on the plane and the lovely and familiar voice of the lady telling the passengers how to fasten the seat belts. It always made me feel familiar and comfortable. I’m so used to it that if I had to stop travelling right now and I would have to stay in a place for the rest of my life I would feel like a lion in a cage or as a bird that can’tfly.
My story starts the day of my birth. I was born in Bogota, Colombia. My parents were there because of some job’s affairs and my birth wasn’t planned at all. Since they couldn’t move back to Italy things went this way. Nobody would ever get my place of birth because the way I look doesn’t resemble a Colombian girl. Blond hair, blue eyes and white skin don’t match the physical traits that couldbring people to think that I was born in Latino America. It was there where for the first time I learned, unconsciously because I was too young, my second mother tongue, Spanish. My first mother tongue is Italian, of course. I lived there for a couple years and then my parents went to Libya. In Tripoli I lived for two years and then for the first time I went to Rome, Italy. It was in the kindergarden that I learned how to speak Italian. I could understand it because my parents used to talk to me in Italian, but since I was really young I didn’t have the opportunity to answer them back the same way.
I lived there for two years and then I went to Caracas, Venezuela. I was five years old by that time. I still remember the first day when all the girls came to me and we broke the ice talkingwith signals and I really appreciated because they were trying to be nice with the new girl from Italy. At that time my mother tongue was Italian so at the beginning it was really difficult to adapt to a new culture and a new country. I attended an Italian school where you also had some subjects in Spanish, so while my mother tongue was getting stronger, my second language and my bilingual...