Learning (“Play Hot Cross Buns on the theremin (i.e. learn to play the theremin).”- This can be a goal to learn anything, whether useful or not. Conspicuous options that we would like to have is a language (as we will be traveling, and needing to learn a language anyway). On the other hand, we’d very much appreciate other goals.
- Learn how to cook a full course meal of 12 different regional/cultural cuisines over the course of a year. This means that depending on the cuisine, it might include a soup, appetizers, a first and second plate, bread, desert, side dishes. It includes baking the bread yourself or making the pasta or doughs, cutting the meats yourself, making your own preserves or sausages, food placement/presentation, every step from scratch excluding drinks (unless those drinks are things like cocktails or smoothies/lassis), and so forth. Any ritualistic steps to meal should also be mastered. Recommended cuisines: American soul food, South Indian, Philippine, Peruvian, Mexican, Italian (pick a region), German, Persian, authentic Cantonese, Ethiopian, Eskimo, Japanese, Vietnamese, Afghani, Russian, Bangladeshi, Californian! I offer us up as judges. -SLYLS
- Master 50 different chords on the guitar. -LAANK
- Learn enough to be at the conversational level of a 6 year old in at least 3 languages (in addition to any you already know). -444?
- Travel to some foreign country. Learn to play a uniquely local instrument. Then perform a song/jam with a local band. Record it. -OLnAG
- Look up a new word every day. for the rest of your life. -GERNE
- Teach 25 people who don’t know English sign language. – BARAG
- Attach a G.I.Joe to a baking soda rocket and make sure he comes down safely with a parachute. – BARAG
- Build a vehicle that you can actually ride yourself and has an engine/motor. -LAANK
- F– Apple, F— Microsoft. Download Linux (Ubuntu is the one I use, and it’s beautifully user friendly) as your OS, embrace cheerful technocratic anarchism, and learn something about how software works in the process. -20
- Go to the best restaurant in your town. Order the most popular dish. Reverse engineer the dish at home and learn how to make every aspect so that it is indistinguishable from the original dish. Bonus if you invite someone who works at the restaurant over and have them try your dish. –YUNTR
- Learn how to identify every physically identifiable muscle, bone, organ, on your own body or the body of the other. -SLYLS
- Learn how to say “I don’t know how to speak (Insert language here)” in 50 languages. FALUP
- Become aware of and involved in local politics. -444?
- Make music out of a tissue. – BARAG
- Learn how to make a website with HTML or if yo already know this with a more useful language ie HTML 5, Ruby on Rails, C++… –YUNTR
- Learn how to pick 5 different types of locks successfully and demonstrate. – BARAG
- Grow a meal from scratch (ie, grow all of the ingredients you need for a meal) -NOOD
- Learn the words to all of Brittney Spears songs. All of them. -008.5
- Learn to fence…and enter a competition…in a non-english speaking country. -KRULDG^
- Memorize all of the senators and their associated states; or state capitols, or country capitols. –NOOD
- Learn how to rebuild the clutch (of a manual car). -FALUP
- Find petrified wood and find out if it can be into something. – BARAG
- Learn how to unicycle…and do it often. -98%898
- Learn to play the most unusual musical instrument in the world and play a real tune before an audience. –G2W2
- Learn how to be a tour guide in Costa Rica. –G2W2
- Learn how to audition for a part in a play in the Little Theatre of Costa Rica(only English speaking dinner theatre in Costa Rica). Then learn how to audition for the National Theatre of Costa Rica. 6
- Learn the histories of all the major world religions. Start by reading Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCullogh. -SEVEN
- Read all the books you bring. -444?
- Apprentice with a glass blower. –GERNE
- Learn Russian and translate a Tolstoy story you’ve never read into English -**ABC
- Read/watch/listen to everything that others recommend to you. -444?
- Learn a family recipe from the other person’s family, and then cook it for the other. -OLnAG
- Learn to make the perfect cheese (or chocolate–if you have a sweet tooth) croissant. -GERNE
- Memorize the Constitution in its original form. –SQUONK
- -Learn Portuguese and Spanish fluently for travel to Central and South America. –G2W2
- For one meal, visit the source of each element of that meal (i.e. if you are eating a cow, find out where the farm is and go there). (OR) Identify the most common food you have eaten over the past six months, and do same. -OLnAG
- Learn how to juggle…and do it often. -98%898
- Learn celestial navigation. -008.5
- Learn American Sign Language (not just the alphabet) in order to sign one of your poems or stories to a deaf audience. -@@()()
- Cook every recipe in a long cook book (e.g. Julia Childs desserts). -NOOD
- Learn how to jump out of a moving vehicle. -98%898
- Become an expert on either slime mold. You may think we are kidding, but slime mold is a fascinating thing; no other species in the world can do what it does. Read everything there is to know about slime mold. (and there is lots.) -SQUONK
- Memorize a book of the bible well enough to recite with chapter and verse -**ABC
- Learn the basic Xhosa (clicking) language of South Africa. -008.5
- Expose yourself to five languages from a specific area (South East Asia, eastern European, North African). Analyze their similarities. Are there any cultural generalities that you can discover? If possible, compare the same metaphor from each. -@@()()
- Learn to say “I love you” in 100+ languages. -UNGOR
- Learn sign language. –SQUONK
- Learn the Klingon language. -008.5
- Tai chi. Nuff said. -**ABC
- Learn to blow bubble rings underwater. -UNGOR
- Spanish. Enough to to converse and survive in Venezuela for 3 weeks without speaking a word of English, except to each other. -LAANK
- Learn Morse Code. –SQUONK
- Learn to surf and/or paddleboard in Hawaii (emphasis on in Hawaii… more specifically on Oahu). -UNGOR
- Figure out and execute the purification of 100 gallons of water in the jungle. -LAANK
- Learn how to make the 5 mother sauces in french cooking. -YUNTR
- Learn some basics of option trading (covered calls) and how to research stocks. –ANK1
- Learn One Thing That The Other Is Good At But You Know Nothing About: To complete this task, each of you will have to learn a skill from the other that you currently have little/no experience with. From my experience, doing this mutually can be a great relationship tool. I’ll leave it to your partner to determine the standard for having “learned” the task, though this should require at least 1 week of continuous practice. -888ER
- Pull a rabbit out of a hat. Like in a magic show. -LAANK
- Learn how to dance together. Here the idea between these “learning” challenges are those that can only be done together, and activities or skills that can only be improved by relying on the joint improvement of the partner. It’s also a different kind of learning. Sufficient mastery of selected dance set should be presented in some sort of public forum. -SLYLS
- Learn how to grow a garden from seedlings. FALUP
- Learn Thai and you better be able to come back and order food with confidence the next time we go to a Thai restaurant. Plus teach me to read and write!!! Then, when we go visit Thailand we can speak the language fluently. Remember, Thai is NOT a waste of brain space 😀 -ULGO
- Learn 1/4 of the Egyptian language and make a sculpture pyramid with hieroglyphics. – BARAG
- Learn how to make foods that require the help of microbes…Wine, Beer, Sourdough bread or cheese. -YUNTR
- Discover what the extra space in a dinosaurs front part of the skull was used for. (hint – dragon) – BARAG
Difficult Things 