First, I must apologize for…several things: not putting out content with any kind of consistency (here or on social media networks like instagram), not updating a myriad of posts that need updating, and for not talking to you about this until now.
My little “project” is to spend a year traveling through South America. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, not even South America specifically but just perpetual travel in general. I love learning about new cultures and meeting new people; I also think you can’t really learn about a culture and its people if you don’t speak their language. “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” (Nelson Mandela).
As you can see there on the left I did not get off to an auspicious start: in addition to the flight being delayed for over two hours and consequently arriving at 01:00 at night instead of the already late 10:50 it was scheduled to arrive at, I then left my passport in the airport (took it out to fill out the customs form that wanted my passport number) and didn’t realize it until I got to the hotel. I got it back but only after two more hours of screwing around, not to mention having to pay for three trips between the airport and hotel instead of just the one. I would like to mention that the taxi driver was extremely polite, accommodating, and patient. Very friendly fellow who went out of his way to help me.
I’m currently in a hotel, just for this first day. I figured it would be easier since I was arriving so late, instead of having to screw around trying to move into an apartment at midnight. For the rest of the month I have an apartment via AirBnB in Zona T, next to Parque Virrey. It’s a very nice area of Bogotá, supposedly excellent bars and restaurants. After that I’m off to Cartagena for a little over two weeks where I’m staying in a hostel on the recommendation of a Colombian friend. After that it’s Medellin for a month and a half and I’m off to Chile (flying into Santiago, no clue how long I’ll stay there).
Other than producing as much content as I can for you all and observing the culture (and telling you about it), I don’t have any terribly fixed plans. A few years worth of perpetual travel is something I’ve wanted to do forever, I just wish I could’ve started sooner.
Oh! Before we end! Speaking of content for you all, I’m the most active on Instagram under the account “andrewhasacamera” (yes, very clever, I know). I post multiple times per day and with its ability to share short videos (limited to 1 minute) and photos along with a good deal of text in the captions if you choose (where I can go into more detail), it’s really the best way for me to share the local culture I observe every day. Additionally, I plan to write at least a couple posts a week on culture on another blog of mine specifically about that, Cultural Observation (which needs revising and prettying up, yes I know).
I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too
I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free. It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average. It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).
It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:
Cheers,
Andrew
