Culture Shock

Cardio Abs (Tuesday)
23 of 23 minutes. I’m changing up the workout next time. I can’t do the jumps very well so I’m going to replace the jumping exercises with some floor exercises from P90X’s Ab Ripper.

No Workout Today

At the bank job I work with a Nigerian guy named Ola. We only see each other for about an hour a day because his shift ends about 90 minutes after mine begins. Anyway, he showed me something on Youtube the other day that put me to shame.

A young woman named Titilayo Oyinbo has several videos on there where she speaks fluent Yoruba, my family’s native language. Watching it was like a mindfuck, as it was an extremely rare sight. A white woman, from one of the whitest places in the United States (“Cheese Country” Wisconsin), speaking fluent Yoruba. Meanwhile, I can’t speak a word of it and my family is from Nigeria! My parents decided when I was young to not teach me Yoruba because they felt I would interact with my peers better if I only spoke English. It was the wrong move but I understand their logic. What’s worse is that I sometimes see Nigerians at the shipping depot as truck drivers. When they see I’m Nigerian they start talking to me in Yoruba. I just stand there smiling like an idiot, as I can only say simple greetings and curse words.

I bring this up because I plan to buy one of those language learning programs, called Yoruba for Kids or something. I looked everywhere online and this seems to be the best program. It’s going to be March’s single biggest expense, costing a little under $70, but it shouldn’t impede my quest for 16k this month. It’s from a Nigerian website so I’m going to order it from my debit card from my personal account, which doesn’t have much money in it and I rarely ever use. Nigerians have a fair reputation of being notorious scam artists, so I’m always careful when doing business with them. I’m also downloading Nigerian movies and listening to Nigerian artists like P Square so I can learn context and syntax better. I’ve wanted to learn Yoruba for a long time, and it took a cheese head speaking it to finally motivate me.