#41: Becoming a Diplomat & Making Friends on Omegle [1]
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Today
I am joined by a wonderful guest Cole of the YouTube channel Cole Langs.
Cole, how's it going?
Hi, Elle.
It's going great.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm really excited to be here.
Excellent.
Well, thank you for coming on.
You're joining us from New York city today, right?
Yes, Manhattan.
Oh, wow.
Fantastic.
And how are things in NYC?
Uh, extremely, extremely busy as usual.
It's just normal city noises, but...
excellent.
Everything's great.
So Cole.
You run the channel cole Langs.
Uh, I love your about, uh, tab really, you know, to the point you say, uh, I
love languages and going on adventures.
Wonderful.
Um, so tell us, uh, what kinds of videos do you create on Cole Langs?
Sure.
So one of my greatest passions in life is language learning.
So I...
the crux of the channel is just me sharing my experiences with others.
I, I love learning languages from all around the world.
I love using them to interact with people.
I love learning things about foreign cultures, geography, um, pretty
much anything I can do to open my mind about the rest of the world.
I, I, I like to experiment and see what I can see, what
I can learn from other people.
Great.
And, um, what then inspired...
or do you remember when you first became passionate about, uh, specifically
languages and language learning?
Oh yeah, of course.
So I actually didn't...
I'm I'm 22 now I'm, I'm about to turn 23, but I didn't get into
languages until I was 17 or 18.
Um, everyone at my high school had to learn either Spanish or French,
and I chose Spanish simply because there were more speakers, but I,
I didn't really care at the time.
To me, it was just another subject.
Um, and I went through about four years of that.
And, um, then I got an amazing opportunity to go to Spain with
my high school Spanish class.
And once I got there, like everything changed for me.
It was the first time I'd been abroad and after getting into a country
where everybody speaks and interacts in a different language it just,
it was mind blowing to me just to see people conducting their lives
like I conducted mine in the US, but in a different language, it just,
it made it feel so much more real.
Right.
And it was just like this code that I really wanted to crack.
Like I wanted to figure out what people talked about on a daily basis and how
their culture was different than ours.
Once I got back to the US, um, I started learning Spanish on
my own, and then I decided I wanted to be an exchange student.
So I went to Taiwan for a year, learned Mandarin Chinese.
Um, there were a bunch of other exchange students there.
My best friends in the world are from like Mexico and Brazil and
some other, um, European countries.
So I would just ask them to give me like a word in their language every day.
Like, how do you say hello?
And how do you say, how are you?
And they tell me, and then by the end of the year, I was able to have simple
conversations and a number of languages.
So to me, it was just like a fun game of trying to figure out what
other people around the world liked and how they spoke with each other.
I, I just, I, I love it so much.
Amazing.
So that's so wonderful you got to do that.
High school was the Spanish trip.
And then when you were an exchange student, was that
in college or university?
Was that also high school that you went over to Taiwan?
That was also high school.
Wow.
So it was through something called the rotary youth exchange program,
which I had never heard of before, but, um, the, an announcement went on
in my high school and said like, Hey, you want to live in another country?
You know, come check out rotary.
So I went through that whole thing.
It's a really long process.
And I ended up getting, um, arguably the hardest exchange location
because of how different the culture and language languages are.
But, um, I was, I was open to the challenge and it was
the best year of my life.
Fantastic.
And so Spanish.
And, um, Mandarin.
And then have you, uh, learned or studied any languages after that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, uh, ever since I was a kid, pretty much I've wanted to be a diplomat.
So I've studied all the official language, official languages of the United nations.
So English, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic, although
I'm still a beginner in Arabic.
And then also, um, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, and, uh,
a little bit of a few others.
so a few.
Okay.
yep.
Wow.
So what is the tra trajectory for a diplomat?
Andare you you still on track, is that something you still want to be?
Uh, yeah, definitely.
Um, well, my degree is in international relations.
Okay.
And, and you pretty much have to get a master's degree to, to go into this
field because it's so competitive.
Like most people know several foreign languages to a very high level.
Um, and the first step of the process is, is you have to pass this really hard test
called the foreign service officers test.
And it, it tests you on a myriad of different subjects.
Like the, the state department, the governmental agency who conducts the
test, they said that the best way to prepare for it is to simply be curious
and to read and to have a habit of learning things, because there is no
like curriculum you can study in order to pass your test, it's, you're tested
on such a broad array of topics that you have to accumulate all this knowledge
over a period of many, many years.
So I've actually taken the test twice and I failed it both times, so...
oh dear
who knows?
Maybe I'll get it next year.
And it's on like, Current events, world history, geography, just a mix of...
anything, anything I've I've got, I've seen...
brutal.
Well, actually I'm, I'm, I'm not allowed to discuss like anything in
any questions about the test, but, uh, yeah, the topics range from like history
and culture to geography, economics, mathematics statistics, pretty much
everything you learn in in school.
Goodness.
I had no idea.
Wow.
That's tough.
You got it.
The next one, you got it.
Here's hoping.
Is there an official or unofficial number of the languages, the official languages
of the UN that they want you to know?
Um, I think it's up to you.
They definitely prefer it if you can speak several languages, um, it
just makes you more attractive as a candidate, But, um, as far as languages
go, um, they do have a list of what they deem to be critical languages.
I, I believe right now they're, uh, Arabic, Korean, Russian, uh, Pashto,
Urdu, and, um, blanking, um, Persian, Persian, the language spoken Iran.
But they, of course they welcome anybody with language skills.
Okay.
And critical.
Meaning they, they have few people who speak these.
So they, if you speak them, they will, you'd be more likely to get on?
Exactly.
There's, there's a really large demand for, ah, for people who speak those
languages and not enough supply.
Wow.
I did not know that.
Okay.
Wow.
Best of luck with the whole diplomat thing back to the channel though.
So your channel is super fun.
Um, You do a lot of the, uh, kind of Omegel Omegle...
we talked about this before we started recording, seems like
people pronounce it both ways.
I wanted to try and pronounce it right so I don't seem as old as I
am, but I'm gonna go with Omegle.
Um, first off for our listeners who don't know, who are all as old
as me, or maybe older, uh, what is Omegle and what do you do on Omegle?
So Omegle is basically a chat roulette site, where you go on,
you turn on your webcam and you get paired with a random stranger.
And the fun thing about it is pretty much anything can happen.
And I mean, like literally anything, I, I try to use it to practice
languages, but sometimes you, you meet some weird people, but you can
also meet some really cool people and have really like deep conversations.
Like I've, I've met I've, I've made some genuine friends on there that I've,
I've spoken to for like hours at a time.
So it's a really fun site.
Uh, if you know how to use it, you can add interests and if someone
also put in that interest, then the website will match you together.
So I like to put like languages and travel and stuff like that...
so, or geography maybe.
And, uh, I just go on there and try to practice some languages
with people and see what happens.
yeah.
And surprise a lot of people in the process of course.
That's gotta be so fun when you know it's coming, you know?
It's because I can't help myself.
Like, like the first question is always like, where are you from?
And if it's from a country that, that speaks a language that I
know, I, I can't help myself.
I have to say something in the language, even if I'm like really bad.
Uh, it's, it's such a good way to break the ice and make a
connection with someone no matter what you're doing or where you are.
Exactly.
And as you say, even if you don't speak it well, that other person though surely
appreciates you even saying anything.
It's like a, it's just cool, right?
Someone's trying to connect with you.
You know, trying to speak a language you know or your
mother tongue, it's very cool.
Yeah.
That's actually one of the things I, I try to get across on my channel to
people is that you don't need to be really good at a language in order to
have an impact on someone else or even yourself, like just knowing a few words
or phrases can brighten up someone's day.
Especially if that person is really used to like speaking English or,
or another language in their daily life and may not get to hear their
native language a lot of the time.
And do you have a favorite, uh, interaction that you've had on, on Omegle?
Oh God, there, there have been so many.