As a native speaker of Hebrew, English has fascinated me from a very young age.
I remember myself, only eight years old, at a dinner with guests from overseas, standing up with pure Israeli hutzpah, and introducing myself and my brother with the very few words I had acquired at school up to that point. Needless to say, my English was less than perfect at the time.

My interest in English boosted alongside my curiosity to understand the many volunteers, who frequented the Kibbutz I grew up in, and my parents' home, where they were welcome to a home-away-from-home. 

I was a real bookworm, and by the fifth grade, when I realized that translation does not capture all the nuances of the original text (e.g. accents, idioms, etc.), I replaced my Gone with the Wind Hebrew translation with the original version and enjoyed every bit of it. Since then, I have been reading in both languages.