Spanish Saturdays

So as you know, this year I've been focusing on learning Mandarin. Most of my almost daily work (whether it only be 5 minutes) is on Mandarin. But...

I still have a lot of work to do in Spanish in order to get to the level that I'd like to be at. So, what am I doing about it? I don't want to work on Spanish immediately following Mandarin. I feel like that might confuse my brain a bit. So...

I've started Spanish Saturdays.

What in the world does that mean?!?!?!

Well, luckily I have a very willing/kind of forced communication partner who speaks fluent Spanish 😉 so when I talk to him in Spanish, USUALLY he'll respond back in Spanish. Also, we usually go to visit his parents on Saturdays, so that gives me lots of practice. Another thing we might do on Saturdays is visit some friends who speak Spanish and I get a lot of practice that way too. Last night was one of those times. We met with the owner of a new Mexican restaurant and in addition to being REALLY great practice, with background noise and distractions and chewing,

it was DELICIOSO!

That's some of the food we got to eat and it was VERY good.

Another thing that I do to practice listening Spanish is watching T.V. shows. Currently, Luis and I are watching an HBO show called Sr. Avila. It's kind of creepy and disturbing, but also interesting. We do use English subtitles while watching this one for some reason. I don't remember if we checked for Spanish ones or not. But it is very difficult to understand their dialect and all of the slang sometimes, especially if there's loud, creepy music in the background. Another great show that I am currently watching is called Las Chicas del Cable on Netflix. Some of you may know it as Cable Girls. I really like this show. I think it is well-made. I use Spanish subtitles on this one, because again, I'm not too familiar with the dialect and they speak VERY fast. It always helps to learn new grammar combinations too.

Listening to music in Spanish is another thing that I do every Saturday and other days too. I personally like bachata music the best, but reggaeton can be pretty good too. One time I actually memorized all of the lyrics to one of my favorite songs and was singing it somewhere with Luis, and we met a guy there and he asked where I was from, as in which SPANISH-SPEAKING country! haha I was like... uhh New Hampshire?

Finally, I recently bought an advanced Spanish grammar book. This is helping me lock down all of those nitty-gritty grammar details that are hard to remember, with exercises to help practice. I'm up to chapter 3 so far.

I'd like to get to the point where the words just fall out of my mouth and I don't need to stop and think about whether it's grammatically correct or if it sounds strange. Usually by the end of the day on Saturday I kind of feel like this. I tried to do a whole month of Spanish last year and it did not work out. It turned into just a weekend. It was hard to speak with Luis only in Spanish because I didn't have all of the vocabulary to talk about work-related stuff and important household business. Plus, it took a lot of effort on both our parts, so it was somewhat exhausting. From then until now though, I feel I've made A LOT of progress, to the point where speaking in Spanish all day is not exhausting for Luis or for me. Thank goodness!

Alright everyone, well I hope you've enjoyed learning about how I am trying to improve one language while learning another. If you have any shows, books, or music you can recommend, please let me know in the comments. Gracias a todos!