Transcript of AE 1151 - Interview: How to Learn 5 Languages from Scratch with Camille Hanson – Part 1

G'day, you mob! Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Camille Hanson, who is an online English teacher, influencer, author, avid language learner and mum of three. She does a lot of travelling and I thought it would be great to get her on the podcast and have a bit of a yarn, have a bit of a chat.

So this is going to be split into two parts. Today is Part One where we talk about a whole range of different topics, including what it's like being a parent to very young children, what it was like for Camille growing up in the US. She didn't have the standard childhood. She grew up in a very cold part of the US called Michigan, had a cold climate. We talk about different accents and dialects in the US and what it's like if you've got a very unique accent or dialect and decide to move somewhere, say like California or New York.

Later on in life, we talk about vegetarianism, we talk about language learning. She speaks five languages and what it was like learning at school versus learning later on in life by yourself. And then lastly, we talk about what it's like travelling around the world with three kids whilst also trying to learn languages. So without any further ado, guys, slap the bird and let's get into today's episode.

G'day, you mob! How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I have Camille Hanson on the podcast. She is a mum, polyglot, author, and content creator and English teacher online. Camille, how's it going?

Hey, it's going great. How are you?

Good. I'm good. I'm tired, but good, man. I talk about this too often, but I got gastro again. Fourth time, since my daughter was born.

Oh!

I'm recovering from that this week. That's been great fun. So how does it- does it get easier? The- like you've got older kids than my kids. Does the gastro slow down?

Yeah. So what do you mean by gastro?

Like a stomach bug, right? Like vomiting.

Oh, okay.

Gastroenteritis.

Oh, you have- Oh, no. Oh, no. So usually, I don't know how, but I never get what my kids get. But I just fight through it. Yeah, I fight through it. I take a lot of supplements. Apple cider vinegar.

Yeah.

Vitamin C. I do- oh, I do an immunity booster shot with lemon juice and maple syrup. And garlic is-.

Is it a daily thing?

No, only when I'm starting to feel under the weather, I take that shot, and I swear it helps every time. I do not have time to get sick. I have too many things to do, so I stay fairly healthy.

Yeah, it's. It's not- you sound like my wife. Where she, for whatever reason, I don't know if it's like a pregnant woman thing. And then after you give birth and you have young children, that the women seem to not get sick like the men do.

I feel, at least in my personal experience, my wife seems to always dodge those bullets so the kids will get like really sick. I'll get it. And my wife's like, I'm fine, you know? And you just sort of like, how did you- we're all in the same house. Like, how did you dodge that?

I know. It's the same thing in my house. The last few times my husband has gotten it and I have not. Someone has to take care of the family. I think that's why.

Well, and that's- it may be an evolutionary thing, right, where the mum has to stay healthy to take care of her kids, whereas the- the men are disposable.

I don't know about that. I'm sure you're very involved, too.

Yeah. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your background? Where are you originally from and what was it like growing up there?

Oh, my goodness. So I'm originally from the Upper Peninsula. I am a Yooper. That's what they say.

A Yooper?

So- a Yooper. Yes. A Yooper accent is pretty intense. I think I've lost most of my accent. I don't pronounce the words like they do up there or it's like bag and tag. They're like bag and lag and- I can pull it out. I can pull it out, but I'm not like super proud of the accent, but I'm proud of my heritage. My parents are part Finnish and Swedish, so I come from that background, Scandinavian roots.

We grew up with a sauna in our house, which was a lot of fun.

Hence the blonde hair, I imagine?

Yes, exactly. All my sisters. I'm one of five girls and we all have blonde hair. Yeah.

Holy moly. Far out.

Yeah.

So how do you spell Yooper?

Y O O P E R.

And does it stand for anything? Or is it just like, where does that-.

A person from the U.P. Yooper! I know! And they call people from lower Michigan 'trolls' because they live under the bridge, because there's a bridge going from Upper Peninsula to lower peninsula. So.

So what was it like growing up then in Michigan compared to the rest of the US? I mean, people listening and as well as myself probably have a bit of experience because we watched so many TV shows and movies and listen to a lot of American culture, music, all that sort of stuff. Is, is Michigan really, really unique in terms of culture and everything compared to the rest of America? Or is it somewhat sort of similar? Because I know compared to Australia you guys have a lot of diversity, right? So what was it like? How does it compare?

Yeah, I would say as far as the Upper Peninsula goes, a lot of times people are like, are you from Canada? Because the accent is similar to there and then it's very cold. So I grew up- I feel like people from the U.P. just have to be tough, man.

I grew up hauling wood. My dad would cut down trees and us girls would have to literally haul firewood for the winter. Like, I grew up pulling weeds and watering gardens and picking berries and tons of outdoor things. So I think it was a really healthy childhood. No TV in my home until we were- I was 12 when my dad first got a TV.

Wow.

So a lot of outdoor living. I learnt how to fish, I never learnt how to hunt, but my dad did hunt deer every single year. So...

Is that because you didn't want to learn or because it was like a-.

Yeah, yeah.

Manly man thing and we keep this away from the girls?

No, some of my sisters learnt, but I was like, "That was just gross, dad." It's so bloody. I don't like it. I don't want to do it. Yeah.

I think I could handle shooting the deer. Again, it sounds brutal, but I can imagine taking the responsibility of hunting and killing your own food seems very kind of responsible and romantic. A little bit romantic to me, right? Like you're out in the wilderness, you're taking it upon yourself to be humane and kill the meat that you're actually going to eat, as opposed to just buying it at the supermarket. But I think the processing of the animal after having killed it would be the thing that would turn me off. I'd be like, Nah, I'm a vegetarian. Screw this.

Yeah, no, I am a vegetarian. Ironically. Ironically, I am. I still eat fish, I eat eggs, I eat cheese. But I still have those images of the deer hanging in my dad's garage, which is open, you know. And then sometimes like the meat like that, he would cook. I just remember, like blood on the plate and just things like that. And that is intense. I just don't love it. But they are big meat eaters. Even my family eats meat. My kids, my husband, my parents. Yeah.

Do you think that, like that vegetarian thing? A lot of vegetarians that I meet, at least the ones who've maintained it, seem to have become vegetarians as kids. And it's usually some kind of, I don't want to say traumatising event, but they kind of- something happens where they they suddenly get that realisation of, 'Oh crap, we're eating animals.' Like, like, like our dogs and cats and sheep that we see. The cute little bunnies and all that sort of stuff. And then they're like, 'Yeah, no, that's not happening ever.' So is that your sort of experience? Was that from a very young age or was that later in life?

No, but it is funny because I have memories where we'd be out at a campfire roasting hot dogs and I just didn't like them. So I would pretend I had a hot dog and I just have the bun. Yes, I know. Me and my mom laughed to this day, so I've never been a huge fan of meat.

And then I realised, okay, you know, when all the Netflix documentaries came out, What The Health, Forks Over Knives. I watched them and I was like, I actually don't love eating meat. This is really gross. Why am I still eating meat? And so I gave it up and it was actually pretty easy. It's been over five years already.

This is one of those things that it's going to be really interesting in the next 50 or 200 years. We probably won't see it. But when, when we have the ability to create meat in a lab as easily as to farm animals and kill them and then harvest the meat to sell in in the shops. And when that meat in the lab becomes as expensive, it's going to become one of those things, I think, where we'll be like, What the hell were we doing in the past? Like, this was so immoral and unethical when we have the option now of just buying cruelty-free meat, suffering-free meet.

So it would be really interesting for our kids probably, and their children, where that option may be available to them. And they'll be looking back and being like, you guys used to just mass slaughter all these animals and have them in the shops. Like, That's awful. And we'll be like, Well, that was the only option, you know, at the time. Like..?

Yeah, it's true. I think I feel like things are ever evolving in the food line and in creation and in, like you said, creating things in the lab. They already have many meat substitutes out there.

Yeah.

Super interesting.

Have you tried those?

A couple of them, but I usually just- I don't even do it. I try to eat as wholesome as possible. I cook a lot of my own food. I do a lot of Indian and Thai food with a lot of vegetables and things like that. We do a lot of beans and chickpeas. And so I feel like you can make delicious food that hasn't been manufactured in a lab as well. And it's healthier, I think, for your body.

I guess that's that thing too, of if you don't like meat because it tastes like meat, you're not really going to want vegetable products that taste like meat. You'll be like, this has just made something I like really bad.

Yeah, yeah. But for people that don't want to eat meat, maybe it could be a good option for them. That's still like the taste of meat.

Yeah, I think that's one of those things. The only thing that's turned me off, those impossible burgers and everything, is that they just. They can't seem to get the texture right. You know, that, that kind of like fibrous, the meaty, fibrous kind of texture. So it still, it just feels weird because it's not meat, but it's not veggies. And you're kind of like, this is just strange. It doesn't feel like normal food. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, going back to growing up in Michigan, how culturally different were you, do you think, from the rest of America or from different parts of America? We probably see New Yorkers and Californians who are kind of a bit different, but kind of the city slicker-kind of type Americans. Right. But was growing up in Michigan, where you were obviously from a family that was a lot more, I don't know. What would you say closer, to the land of hunting, chopping firewood? Did you feel culturally different from the kinds of Americans you saw on TV and were surrounded by when you moved?

I think so because it's a pretty sheltered life up in the U.P. really. So I didn't know that much. Plus, not having a TV for years and years, you know? Just know what your parents show, what they display in front of you. But looking back, I'm super thankful for my upbringing and the experiences that I had. And if the weather was beautiful like it is every summer, all year round, I think it could be possible for me to even move back there. Because the winters, six months out of the year. It's tough. It's really tough. So much snow. I'm a warm weather person, but the summers are beautiful. Lake Superior is massive. It's like an ocean. We grew up water skiing and boating in the summers. Summers are really a lot of fun.

Yeah, you'd be rooting for climate change, I think. That would be the only way to, to deal with those winters.

The only way. And my parents just moved to the south last fall, and they're just like, wow, it's so hot. Like, it's still freezing. They compare everything to the U.P. because they live there their whole lives. They're 65 and now they're down here. And so the South is a shock for them. And my dad, he's so funny because the accent is pretty strong down here.

Yeah.

And so he's already like trying to fit in. He'll just be like, 'Y'all, y'all, come in', just try to do the things that I'm like, 'Dad, this just does not so natural coming from you.'.

Wow! So do you guys have that, too? Where if Americans move around in America, you will actually try and take up the local accent a little bit if you want to fit in.

Some people take on some of the slang words, some of the words used. I think it's pretty hard to change your accent unless you've lived there for a long time. So my dad is just doing it more to joke around, I think.

Did you ever notice kids doing that though, in school, when they had travelled overseas and then came back? We had- I went to school and there were a few children who got to do like 'gap years' where they would go to a different country, a lot would go to foreign countries. When I say that, I guess non-English speaking countries and learn the language, but then there would be some who'd go to Canada or America, and this would be when they were probably 15 or 16, and they would come back with an American accent and you'd just be like, Wow, okay. You know?

And it would take months for it to wear off again for them to go back. And it was just really interesting seeing how obviously amenable they were to changing and adapting based on the social group they had around them. And so as soon as they got there, they wanted to fit in and just changed how they, you know, said all of the different vowel sounds and the R's especially. So did you ever notice that when you were at school?

I didn't. So at school I graduated with 24 kids in my class. So it's a very small public school. It was just tiny. It's like a different world. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I would have had 120 in mine. So.

Yeah, most people. Yes.

Crazy. All right. So you grew up in, in Michigan. How did you end up becoming such an avid language learner? And Traveller.

Yeah, that is an interesting question. So my grandfather, he was a missions pastor overseas, mostly to Guatemala. And so I went on my first trip overseas with my grandfather. When I was 17, to Guatemala.

Wow.

And I never even imagined that I'd learn Spanish someday. It was- it's kind of not our mindset to learn languages.

It's just not. We had to take one- no, I actually did take two years in high school, but it was self taught. And I was the only one in the class and it was online. So you don't really- I didn't really learn anything.

What do you mean, it was self taught? As in like you had to teach yourself-

Sorry, you had to have to cut this part.

No, you're right. You're right. So self taught in that what you were studying on your own.

Yeah. So basically they gave you a book and you had to just go on the computer and try to do the assignments with the book and try to learn it by yourself. Yeah. So it wasn't effective for me at the time because I didn't know how to even learn a language, you know?

It's funny you say that because the older you get, as soon as you get out of high school and you start learning languages in the sort of conventional way, that tends to be the way that people learn the most and the fastest, right. It's just autodidactically by yourself online now with the internet and everything. But it is funny that when you don't know how to do that and perhaps you're not motivated, it is, it's ineffective compared to classes.

Yeah. Because since then I've taught myself, but then also speaking to natives with Portuguese, Italian and French, and I did go to a Spanish school, private lessons in Mexico, but I didn't start language learning until I was 27 years old.

And we were like, We're moving to Spain, we're moving to Barcelona. And we got connected with a girl who said, 'My parents live in Mexico and they know a teacher and she's amazing.' So we thought it's way cheaper to go to Mexico. So let's go to Mexico first, learn some Spanish. We took three months and then just moved to Spain and that was shocking. The accent difference from Mexico.

Ah yeah.

To Spain. It's kind of like the English we speak here. And then in Australia, you know, there's a difference.

Do they use a lot of the different pronouns there too? Is it South America that uses like 'usted' instead of 'tu' or, I'm not sure with Spanish.

So in Spain, they use 'vosotros'.

'Vosotros', okay.

... you guys. Yeah. And they do not use that in Latin America.

Yeah. It's funny that split, right. Because that happens in Portuguese where in Portugal you'll have 'tu' and 'vos'. But then in Brazil you'll have 'voce', 'tu voce', there's a whole bunch of different ones that I'm sure that Portuguese people understand but just never use themselves. And if you were to say, if you were to say 'vos' for like the plural 'you' in Brazil it sounds like, I think you're reading from the Bible, right. It's very official, proper language.

Very formal.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's true. There are so many differences in language just between countries, the same language, but between countries, like you said, Portugal and Brazil.

I chose to learn Brazilian Portuguese. Yeah.

I think it's hard. I would love to learn. I would love to learn Portuguese. Portuguese. But it becomes one of those things of I'm not living there, I'm not planning to go to Portugal. So it's kind of, it's ineffective because all the content that I'm consuming in every single Portuguese speaker I come across, 99% of them are Brazilians. And so it's kind of like it makes more sense, right? So.

Yes.

Think I've lost you there again. We're back! We're back.

You see, you see when you freeze, right? You know.

Yeah I see you frozen. I don't see me frozen but yeah.

Oh interesting. Ok, yeah. I don't see me frozen. Just you.

Oh, well, okay. So you started learning Spanish. What was that process like when you went to Mexico? Was that a really quick process that you pick the language up in classes, or is it slow and arduous? What was it like for you guys?

Yeah. So it was a Monday through Friday, 4 hours of class.

Wow.

Just me and my husband. And then she would give us 30 words of vocab to learn a day. It was pretty traditional. It was all grammar, a lot of grammar. We would read out loud in class with her. And then we lived with Mexican families, so we'd go home to these families that did not speak any English. So it was an immersion, I would say.

And by the end of the three months we were speaking in broken Spanish, broken sentences, but I remember my head hurting and us needing to take siestas every day. We were just so tired. Like language learning is tiring. It happens to me every time in the start of a language because I go full in. I just want to get as much as I can and learn so much. And every time I'm like, Why am I more tired than normal? And then I'm like, Oh yeah, new language.

Well, I'd have to look into the neuro-linguistic side of it, but it feels like it's probably your conscious brain is having to work so much harder than usual. Like when we're speaking English here, we don't think consciously about putting the sentences together or anything like that. But when I- even when I still speak in Portuguese with my wife, at times I feel like it requires more energy than English.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

So, sorry.

No, no. Sometimes I go to sleep at night, like trying to form sentences of the language I'm learning, like, in my head, you know, right before bed.

I catch myself sometimes trying to translate what people are saying to me when they're speaking in English and as a kind of like exercise or try and say it in Portuguese in my own head, but you end up sort of zoning out.

Yeah. Like, Wait, are you with me here?

I know. That's it. Your eyes just glaze over.

Yeah. Yeah.

So how did you end up then learning a bunch of different languages on top of that? Because you speak about five different languages, right?

Yes. Yes. So after Spanish, we moved to Spain. We lived in Spain for a couple of years. We moved back to Hawaii. We were living in Hawaii, back and forth. And we had a friend there who asked me, literally, I remember, and this is why I started learning another language. She was like, 'Camille, why do you only speak Spanish and English?' Because she was from Finland and she spoke like five languages. And I was like, 'You know what? You're right, I can learn another one.'.

So I chose Italian. And me and my husband. We were like just watching Netflix in the evenings. We had our two small kids, Maddox and Ivory, and we were like, You know what? We really could make better use out of our time. Let's just do a three month language challenge. Let's just each study a language for three months. So he chose Portuguese, ironically, and I chose Italian. And every night for probably 2 hours we would just be studying our languages side by side, but different languages, and we loved it. And that was like the start. And then it was probably two years later when I was like, I was watching a polyglot video on YouTube and I'm like, Okay, polyglot goals. I have to become a polyglot. So cool.

And the next day I started learning Portuguese. And I studied it pretty intensely for a year. And then I knew, okay, I might as well learn French because then I have the major romance languages done and then I'll start with 'not done'. You always are learning. I mean, I make a lot of mistakes. My goal isn't to master any one language, but to get to a good level of proficiency in all of them so that I could have a live with somebody in that language so that I can understand movies and talk to people, have phone calls, live in the country. So a good level but not mastering it. And then I move on to the next language.

So how do you maintain them? Because I found that really difficult. I tried to pick up Spanish a while back, but I think my Portuguese was still to, to sort of basic to intermediate level that I was just finding the language has kind of infected one another. And so it would make it very difficult to, to keep them separated and then advance in both of them. So how do you end up maintaining, I guess, boundaries between those languages, especially when they're all romance languages and they're all so similar to one another? So there'll be a lot of cognates, the grammar will be similar.

Yeah. So I think my biggest thing is that I've made real friends that speak those languages that I want to talk to on a regular basis.

So it's really having these friendships, having phone calls with my friends, and then I love watching series in other languages. And I really enjoy reading books as well. So I have a bunch of books that- I have them going at the same time and they're in different languages. So.

Do you ever read the same book in all those languages? Like I've had Harry Potter before,

That's a good idea!

Where I've read chapter by chapter in French and in Portuguese, you know, to try and be like, All right, so I read it in the strongest language first and then I'm like, I know what's going on. And then the weaker language. I'm like, Well, I already know what happens in this chapter, so I can kind of fill in the blanks.

Yeah, it's a great idea. I have that going on just with a French, but it's also an English because French is my, I would say, weakest language maybe right now, because it's the most recent and it's hard. Literature is another level, you know.

In French.

Really. Yes. Yes.

Why do you think that?

Because it just feels like, okay, well, first of all, nothing is- it's not phonetic. So when I'm reading compared to when I'm having phone calls, I'm like, Oh, yeah, this is this word, you know? And then there's just, it's a very, very rich language. And so I feel like, man, it's not easy. It's been the hardest one for me. And I've studied it the longest as well.

I think French is one of those ones, too, that's interesting. Because when you read you don't realise- I think from memory there's like 14 verb tenses in French and ten of them they use when speaking, but the other four, they only use in writing; again, from memory. And so there's a whole bunch that you'll be reading and you'll be like, What the hell are all these words? And then you just have to remember, Oh, they're using all these words that you would never actually say, but they're conjugating these verbs, using these tenses that are literally tenses and not actually what you would speak or say. You'd sound like a weirdo, speaking with Shakespearean kind of English if you were to use them.

I actually didn't know that. So that's going to motivate me now with my French reading. Thank you for that.

Yeah, it was a difficult one for me to overcome, too, because they, they do it with everything. So you'll read Harry Potter and they'll be using a bunch of those tenses and you'd be like, God, can't you just write it in, like normal English? Normal English. Normal French?

Yes. Yes. Did you actually learn French? No?

I know it's tough. It's tough. But so yeah, I was going to say, which one of these did you find the most difficult? So French is the most difficult out of all the romance languages you reckon that you've encountered?

Yes. Yeah. Pronunciation. I still struggle with the R and the U. I'm like, that's my giveaway. Yeah. Like if I open my mouth and pretty much every word has those letters, you know?

I think, what- yeah, what's one of those funny ones that I had when I was first learning it saying like 'beau cul' instead of 'beaucoup'. Right. Like, so you're saying,

Oh, yeah.

'Beautiful butthole' instead of 'a lot', right?

Yes. You have to be careful. You have to be careful with that pronunciation.

Or those, those cognates, right. With like, 'excited'. Did you ever have that in.

Oh yeah.

That'd be the same I reckon. It must be the same in all of them. Where 'excited' in those languages means horny, right. Turned on.

Yes.

Whereas-.

You have to be careful. Yes.

You would need to say what? Like, 'animated', I think typically tends to be the word that you would use in those languages. That means 'excited' like 'animado' in Portuguese would be 'excited' if you said 'excitado', they'd be like, "Whoa, dude, put it away!", you know.

But it's like the beauty of language learning because it's really funny to me to find those differences. I love it. I really do.

Have you-.

Are we back?

Yes. Yeah, I know. It's slowing down. I'll give you time for you to come back here. Okay. Have you been teaching these languages with you- to your kids at all? Or are you using any of these languages with your kids?

So, really, not so much. I wish I could say 'Yes, I am.' I want them to learn, but they're not really into it. So when we were travelling we had a nanny for, whenever possible, I would search for a nanny and every time the nanny never spoke English. So we had a nanny that spoke only Portuguese, spoke only Spanish. So my kids were picking it up and it was pretty amazing to see, especially my older son, who was eight, he was really starting to learn things. And then we came back to the States and he was like, No, he was starting to mix Spanish and Portuguese together. Yeah, it was so funny. He'd say one sentence with some Spanish and some Portuguese in it, and I was like, Interesting.

Yeah, well, it's funny. My kids, so we speak Portuguese only at home effectively, probably 90% of the time. English does come-.

You, too?!

Yeah, my wife and I. Yeah.

You both do with your kids?

Yeah, well, she's Brazilian, so.

Yes.

Yeah, so she.

But usually, like, one parent will stick with one language and then the other will stick with the other language.

I'm being selfish, so I'm, I'm trying to improve. Yeah, I'm trying to improve my Portuguese at the same time and maintain it-.

Ahh, smart!

Because her entire family doesn't speak English. So I'm trying to be able to at least speak Portuguese well enough to communicate with them. But the hardest thing is that they get English everywhere else.

And so they, they've pretty quickly just become English as default and they'll insert words that are Portuguese every now and then, like, Oh, what does Noah always say? He'll be like, 'I want the door perto.' And I was like, Do you mean 'aberta', 'aberta', 'porta aberta', like 'door open' when he goes to sleep, he wants the door open and he'd be like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aberta, aberta. I, I want, I want the door aberta.' And I'm like, oh, just pick one language.

It takes a while, but then kids learn how to separate and then they will have incredible levels in both languages. They'll be native.

I hope so. That's the difficult part. I think that requires a lot of work. It's being able to maintain the exposure but also make it fun so that they don't want to get away from it. Because I feel like if we, if we were this kind of parents, that would be like, you need to sit down and study Portuguese. I think pretty quickly they'd be like, Screw this, I'm not interested, just English. And you'd get that rejection of the language. And so that's the hardest part. It's like, how do we make this fun? How do we show them it's useful and keep them engaging with it every single day? But yeah, daycare is brutal because every day they come back from daycare with new English words or phrases and you're just like, Could you guys just speak Portuguese at daycare? Like, dammit!

But they'll be amazing. They'll be amazing in both, you'll see. And that is the biggest gift that you can give your kids: language. Seriously, we had to struggle as adults to learn these languages. We're still struggling as adults, and for them to be able to get it from zero is incredible.

Yeah, fingers crossed. So you've done a lot of travelling. You've done a lot of travelling in your time. I think I read on your Amazon bio that you've been to 40 countries which, which have been the most interesting and which have been your favourites?

Oh, wow. I need some time. So I'll just tell you from my most recent travels, we went to Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil and Peru, and Peru shocked us. Peru was just incredible. The landscapes, the food, the people, the handcrafted things that people make there and sell, just so cool. And then the prices, so low, so incredible.

Is Peru the country where they have those really interesting tribes, where the women wear top hats?

Yes, yes, yes.

I've always wanted to go and check, check those places out because like I remember seeing the clothing and the cultural practises there in documentaries and on TV, and I'm like, this is just so interesting. And the top hat, the- how the top hat became this, this thing that they wear that just seems so interesting.

They- it became that, if I'm not wrong, because they wanted to distinguish between tribes.

Ahhh!

And so ones that have the flattop are from a different tribe than the ones that have- yeah. They have different hats and-.

So, like, social markers.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then of course, there are just incredible. There's Machu Picchu, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. There's Coca Canyon, which is one of the biggest canyons in the world. There are llamas and alpacas. I mean, come on, they're amazing. My favourite animal now, I literally- my husband was like, 'Mille, you're coming over the spirit of the land.' I almost got a llama tattoo. I just fell in love with them. They're so cute.

Do you ever just see them in Peru, like on the side of the road as well?

Yes.

Oh, really?

Exactly. That's what you see. So then we would always be like, 'Oh, my gosh!' We would stop the car, we wouldn't get too close, but we would go take pictures, watch them. My kids are fascinated. We would take videos. They're just wild. And then there are- one time, this was so cool. We went to like a salt- a salt lake. Incredible. Like it was made of salt, but it looks like snow. And we had to go through this little town crossing. And this lady happened to be letting out all of her llamas. So there were hundreds of llamas. And I was like, 'Oh, I'm in heaven!' In llama heaven, just getting to watch them all.

So, you just go running in amongst, 'I'm home!'

Yeah, yeah! Home with the llamas. You want to go hug them, but they don't recommend it. So I never got-

Yeah, I heard they're pretty vicious, right? They pretty vicious animals.

I didn't see that side. I only saw them as adorable and sweet. But supposedly they can spit in your face and yeah, they can be a little vicious. So.

I've heard they can kick the crap out of you, like there's- we have them in Australia and.

Yeah.

They'll have them in an, in and amongst flocks of sheep that are 'lambing' generally. So you'll have one, you'll see one llama or one alpaca with a flock of sheep and it's because of the foxes that we have here. So foxes that are in, an introduced species in Australia, kill the lambs and are a big problem. And the sheep aren't defensive enough. And so they put an alpaca or a llama in there and the llama will fuck them up if they- if a fox comes anywhere near them. Yeah. We'll mess them up. So you'll see that every now and then. You'll see these like a flock of sheep and there'll be one with a really tall neck and a big head sticking over the top, looking around.

Wow, that's hilarious. Yeah, they told us my kids really wanted to ride them, and they're like, no, 20 lbs limit for the llamas. Because some are conditioned to take, like they're tourist attractions in some towns. So they'll dress them up and the women have them and then you can pay them and take a photo or pet it or things like that, which we did every time because it's just so cool.

Wow. So where else have you been? Is it mainly South America and Europe that you've been travelling?

Yes. As well as- we lived in Taiwan for three months.

Yeah.

And then India for three months. We were in Thailand and Turkey and then I would say mostly Europe as well. And then yeah, Central and South America. Never been to Africa.

Yeah, I know. Neither have I. I would love to go. How do you feel as an American? Because it seems like the stereotype is that Americans don't leave America, but the ones that you meet, who you meet at home, like in my country, the Americans I meet tend to be very open minded, worldly. They learn other languages because they've- I guess it's like self selecting the Americans you're going to meet in Australia are the ones that are leaving the country and travelling around and interested in the rest of the world. Do you feel like it? You know, you're a bit different from the average American that way, a bit more worldly and have a different view of of, well, the world, right?

Yeah. I mean because we've travelled so much, because we've lived overseas, I feel like the experiences that we've had and the people that we've met have definitely shaped us. And we are more open minded and interested in other countries of the world.

Like to hear my son say, Oh, I just really want to go to Turkey. I'm like, most eight year olds probably don't even know that there is a country called Turkey. They just know the animal, you know. So I think it's even shaping our kids to have a bigger world view and just to see, 'Wow, people live like this.' So we're really adaptable as travellers. Like sometimes we have to stay in one room. I mean, it's not ideal, it's not good over the long term, but- we don't have the comforts that we have here in the States, you know, our own home and we have a pool and we have anything we want at our fingertips and 5 minutes down the road, any type of food and all of those things.

And so when we travel, we're giving that up. But in exchange, we're learning about cultures, we're visiting Mayan ruins and architecture and meeting people and hearing their stories and doing interviews on the streets and all of that stuff. And I feel like I'm just like, whoa, like, I have so much to learn from everyone else, you know?

I think that's the thing you get addicted to, right? And I think that was what encouraged me to keep wanting to learn languages. I was like, the process of just discovering new things, whether it's how the language works or whether it's about different cultures or being able to talk to people who've grown up in different cultures and they can share their experiences with you if they don't speak English, it's like, it's so kind of addictive once you start opening that door, right?

Yes. We just got a printed book in the mail, like a photo book of our last trip we took and we're like, Oh, we've got to travel again. We just miss it. We feel so alive when we travel and we love it and we're so thankful. We recognise that like, wow, it's a privilege that we get to travel and see the world and work online. It really is.

Do you think most Americans, and probably not just Americans, Westerners in general, appreciate things the way that you probably do as a result of travelling and learning languages and everything? Because I feel like the average Australian here, if I were to meet them, I don't feel like they have a deep appreciation for how lucky we are and what we have.

Yeah, I don't think so. I really don't. A lot of people that I meet they're, they don't- even in America, it seems like everywhere else people want to travel. But other Americans are like, No, I'm fine here. Many of them don't have interest in travelling. I have very few American friends that speak other languages, so sometimes it's hard to relate and identify. But I hope I can inspire people to learn and to travel and to keep growing and developing as, as people. Really.

Yeah. Very true.