At this stage, you won’t be able to understand much, perhaps just the gist of what’s being said. But you’ll start to get a feel for how the language sounds, and how speakers of the language put together their thoughts. Keep building your knowledge of grammatical structures and slowly augment your vocabulary. Soon, with a lot of work and patience, you’ll notice your comfort with the language improves.

I think it was the way that I was raised that made me gain an appreciation for secondhand items and thrift stores. When I was a young child, my family opened a flea market in lower Wisconsin.  Every...