I can definitely relate to this article; can you?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

...When you first meet me, I seem like a pretty normal kind of girl. I drink beer, I follow baseball, I watch “The Daily Show.” I grew up in the Midwest, so I’m pretty nice and well adjusted, but for the last seven years I’ve lived on the East Coast, so I’m not too nice or well adjusted. I like puppies, world peace and George Clooney. All in all, I’m an excellent example of run-of-the-mill.

Until you take a look at my bookshelves, that is. I don’t exactly have the usual collection of literary classics and popular nonfiction. Instead, I have language books. A lot of language books. Several shelves of them, in fact, and they’re not exactly useful titles like French in 30 Seconds or Spanish on the Go. My books are more along the lines of Beginning Dutch, An Introduction to Sanskrit, Practical Mongolian.

Every so often, a new acquaintance, secure in my apparent normalcy, will take the time to check out my library, expecting perhaps to start a conversation about the collected works of Jonathan Safran Foer or maybe “Freakonomics,” and isn’t it just so cool? Instead, this is the conversation that usually takes place:

“You’re learning ? That’s so exciting! Are you going to ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/travel/escapes/03ritual.html?_r=1&oref=slogin