The language of my heart

When I was 18, I spent a year in London, studying and practising English. The experience shaped the person I am today in many significant ways. The most obvious one is that I became a Christian that year. My faith is the foundation of my worldview, of my values, and of the character I strive to develop. Yet, that is not the only door that was opened in my heart that year.

I fell in love with the English language and its culture. I made friends in London and learnt tidtits of British history, as well as odd British habits and foods - I have become a heavy tea drinker (with milk, please), and I love mince pies, beans on toast and mango chutney (OK, strictly speaking that's not English, but I learnt to love Indian food when I was there).

I started watching movies in English and reading books. Lots and lots of books. Over the years, I've discovered numerous authors and immersed myself in the worlds they created. I walked in the shoes of hundreds of characters, wept with them, laughed with them, trembled for them. As George R.R. Martin puts it in A Song of Ice and Fire, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." Of course, I already was avidly reading French books, too; but reading in English imprinted the structure and flow of the language into my mind.

Partly because I was discovering faith in English, and partly because I was completely immersed in the language and culture, it created a strong emotional bond in my mind. English wasn't just a language I had learnt academically. It became part of me. It became the language of my heart and mind, sometimes even more than my mother tongue.

Like a cuckoo, I had hatched in a nest that wasn't build by my biological breed - but I felt at home. I returned to Belgium vowing I'd go back to the UK, and I spent a long time feeling homesick. Eventually, several years later, I moved to Swindon and lived there for 6 years, weaving English more and more into my personality. I worked with special needs children and discovered autism. English also allowed me to communicate with people all over the world through the internet, further opening up my mind to different cultures, ways of life and of perceiving the world.

Because I went to London, I learnt a new language that became part of me. I became a Christian. I made beloved friends. I opened my heart and mind to different cultures and ways of thinking. I got to know I had autism.

That gap year yielded outcomes that reached far into my future. I would not be the person I am today if I hadn't decided to go.

Roman Road, Eastend of London, where I lived for a year