If you can read, you can do ANYTHING!!

Reading.....as I was growing up, my mum always told me (and I am sure it's also a famous quote, or perhaps just common sense), "If you can read, you can do ANYTHING".

And it is so true.  Not only can you cook any meal from a recipe book or put together a recently purchased bike, but you can research exotic holiday destinations and learn a new language.

Reading isn't just limited to textbooks and 400 year old plays.  The internet has opened up a whole raft of opportunities for reading and learning.

Living in China, Beijing most so that Shanghai, we found ourselves surrounded by a foreign language.  Every bus journey we took, every menu we attempted to decipher, every shopping mall we visited Mandarin Chinese was the only language we saw or heard.

I really enjoy reading, whether I'm reading "A Long Walk to Freedom" Nelson Mandela's biography or "Chicken Soup for the Soul" but I had never before literally, craved a book.... or magazine..... the printed word.

We soon found Foreign Language Bookshops, where we would spend hours reading titles of Classics, such as "The Odyssey" and "The Secret Garden".  As these books are cheap and readily available from such bookshops, we made the most of this opportunity and devoured these famous stories.    

Free Expat magazines such as the "Beijinger" and "That's Shanghai", provided another source of the written word, not only as a source of entertainment or escaping, but were also informative and at times, thought-provoking.

Reading helped open up opportunities and provided us with a links to home and our own culture when we were so far away culturally and linguistically.

If you can read, you really can do ANYTHING....learn how to make a worm farm or find a piece of home in a foreign land.