travel Archives - Learn Spanish with Andrew

I’m touring South America for a year starting with Colombia

Andrew — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 17:00:38 +0000

Let's learn some travel Spanish together. "El avión se ha demorado cuatro veces" - "the plane has been delayed four times" - "the plane is two hours late" - "sonofabitch" - "hijueputa"/"joder" (Iberian")

A post shared by Andrew Tracey (@andrewhasacamera) on Feb 22, 2018 at 4:27pm PST

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

The post I’m touring South America for a year starting with Colombia appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.

Some Quick Lessons Learned from My First 48 Hours in Spain

Andrew — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 04:42:29 +0000

First: The problem isn’t “speaking Spanish” (or not), it’s speaking their Spanish, and fast enough. I found that I could pick up a Spanish paper (I prefer Heraldo because it’s local) and easily and quickly read through any article and understand 98% of it immediately, no problem. However, when talking to someone it was maybe 2/3rds intelligible and 1/3rd gibberish – the last 1/3rd isn’t things I don’t know, I know them, I just don’t catch them because they’re too quickly spoken. I know all (or almost all) the words, grammar, and syntax that they’re using when speaking – if I can get them to slow down and be patient I can understand them – but the thing is that I’m not used to speaking Spanish (all day long, to everyone, every day), I’m used to speaking English. Consequently, my brain just can’t keep up right now (I suspect I’ll adapt within a couple of weeks), they’re two sentences ahead by the time I’ve figured out what they just said…which means I’ve missed those two sentences because I was too busy figuring out the one before them.

Second: Their Spanish. What I mean is that there are all these little local terms for various things that you simply would never have reason or occasion to learn unless you were living here. I discuss this in a video I’m going to put up later but the summary is this: fabric softener, sponges, and toilet paper are not entertaining or interesting subject matter so they’re rarely or never discussed in popular media like TV shows, movies, and music videos (I doubt Shakira’s going to be singing about fabric softener anytime soon unless Downy cuts her a really big check), which means if you’re using those to learn a language (as I recommend, and absolutely yes I still contend they’re an excellent, though not perfect, means of doing so) then you’re probably not going to learn those terms.

Not only is there the issue of mundane daily locution but also the fact that it’s frequently dialectal, that is the specific terminology is specific to that region, e.g. the term for dishwashing detergent might very well be different from Spain to Mexico to Argentina. When you go to the grocery store and you’re looking for a particular item or trying to determine what exactly a particular item is by what’s written on the label, if you don’t know the necessary terminology you’re going to be in at least a little bit of trouble (though probably not much, granted). I went to the grocery store here and had no damned clue what half the labels and signs said.

Dishwashing detergent?

I was pretty sure this was what I wanted – dishwashing detergent, like Dawn – given its location in the store and appearance (looks like Dawn) but I wasn’t absolutely certain since it didn’t really say on the label. It very much appears (and functions) to be precisely that, so I think I guessed right here, but I just wanted to give you an example of what I’m talking about and this is a particularly good one since even knowing the term for “dishwashing detergent” wouldn’t have helped you here since it doesn’t actually say that on the label. You would actually have to know this specific local brand and what it was, kind of like a bottle of Dawn dishwashing detergent in the U.S. simply being labeled “Dawn” with no other descriptor of what the bottle contained: you’d have to be familiar with that specific brand and understand what it meant in that specific context.

Third: If there’s municipal WiFi available, sign up for it. It’s by far the cheapest way to have high-speed wireless access on your phone and other devices throughout most of the city (in Zaragoza, for example, coverage isn’t perfect but it’s pretty good, certainly good enough to warrant the 15 euros that got me 1 month’s worth of access).

Fourth: Jetlag sucks, it sucks and it’s worth taking care of and getting out of the way as soon as possible, meaning that you may very well end up having to stay up for 18 or 20 hours straight to get yourself back on schedule because you woke up at 12 or 2 or 3 AM in the morning after having gotten in at 4 PM the previous day and crashed at around 5 PM because you were dead tired and now you need to keep yourself up until 9 or 10 or 12 PM or whatever hour you want to regularly go to sleep at.

Also, an announcement…

I’ve created an Instagram account (andrewhasacamera) to which I’ve already added several photos and videos from Spain and which I’ll be posting new things to regularly, I’ve opened up my Facebook account to the public so you should (let me know of any problems) be able to see everything I post without even needing an account, and I’ll be crossposting most of this stuff to my Twitter account.

I’ve never been big on social media (kinda hated Facebook for privacy reasons) but now I’m really seeing its value when you’re doing things like what I am right now and know that a lot of you will really appreciate having small, regular (daily) bits of information and goodies like pics/videos as opposed to waiting for however long it takes me to write a blog post. I hope you enjoy it and please let me know if you have any suggestions (e.g. other social media sites you think I should be on).

That’s all I can think of for now, many more posts are inbound (I just have to write them, hah).

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

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

The post Some Quick Lessons Learned from My First 48 Hours in Spain appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.

I’m going to Spain!

Andrew — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 01:05:39 +0000

I have bought the tickets, booked the apartment (and paid the first month’s rent), bought the necessary luggage, and I’m about to buy some train tickets to get from the airport in Barcelona where I’m arriving to the city where I’m staying for two months, which is…

Zaragoza!

Credit to Paulo Brandao

I can’t wait. I haven’t traveled abroad in 15 years, I’ve wanted to ever since I stopped (I went on three short trips to Europe during the summer while in high school as part of a school program, that’s it).

I’m staying in the same apartment in Zaragoza for two months straight, from September 1st to November 3rd. I’m not interested in touring around the country, staying in a bunch of different places (in hostels, inevitably) for only a few days at a time in each, and not really learning anything beyond the superficial about any of them or Spain. I want to stay in one particular location for a long period of time, meet people, make friends, learn about the culture, the city, the country, and the language. This is the general advice I’ve gleaned over the years from many other travelers: if you really want to learn about one particular country and its culture, you’re better off picking (carefully) one specific location and staying there for a couple of months than you are bouncing around all over the place.

My primary goal will be to learn as much as I can about how to learn a language, or improve it if you already know it, while you’re in a country where it’s spoken. I’m doing this so that I can teach you how to do that, so that I can better serve my customers and readers who might want to know how to go about doing that. Secondary goals will include improving my Spanish, learning about the people and culture of Spain (and conveying that information to you, of course), and gathering any little travel tips I can for you about traveling to Spain, Europe, or just traveling in general, particularly from the perspective of a language-learner.

Lastly, and solely as recreation (this is a business trip so recreation takes a back seat, yes), I’d like to spend some time learning about Spanish wine (wine is one of my hobbies), food, dance (yes, I’m planning on taking dance lessons while I’m there, probably Sevillanas), making new friends, and just generally enjoying the country and culture.

Why?

I purport to speak Spanish and know enough about the language that I’m qualified to teach it to others and to teach them how to learn it on their own. I need to have spent some time in a Spanish-speaking country (I never have).

No, as I and others have repeatedly said, it is absolutely not necessary to go to a country where your target language is spoken in order to learn it, yes you can absolutely do it all on your own from anywhere with an internet connection or even just a decent library. This is especially true now with the proliferation of technology like the internet and smartphones, and it becomes more and more true every single day as said technology improves. However, I’m not just a Spanish student, now am I? The teacher himself must always be at a much higher level than that which he teaches at.

Additionally, I’m not going there to learn Spanish from scratch, I have learned Spanish to a fairly high level entirely on my own, from home, using the Telenovela Method and online resources, most of which are free. It works, I know it works, I think most people now know that it works. I doubt there are very many people anymore who think you have to go to the country where a language is spoken in order to learn it.

However…I’m not just a Spanish student (and yes, I still am, you never stop learning a language, not even your native one), I’m the author of a book on how to learn Spanish and the owner of a language-learning company (and currently its only employee, haha, to be fair). I personally believe that it’s a credibility issue, that yes, in order to really be taken as seriously as I would like to be in this field I need to spend a decent amount of time in the country where each language I claim to be knowledgeable of is spoken. I need to have interacted with natives ‘in their natural habitat’ so to speak (hah, like they’re some sort exotic fauna and I’m David Attenborough). I need to have experienced the people, the country, and the culture that the language originates from first hand. So I’m going to do it…in three weeks.

Why Zaragoza?

Because the rent is affordable (initially I was interested in Seville – it’s expensive), the climate is nice the time of year I’m going to be there (Seville is hot right now and doesn’t even begin to cool off til October), it’s big enough to be interesting and have all the things I want to do but not so big that it’s…cold, for lack of a better word, meaning that the people are stand-offish and difficult to get to know, like would be the case in New York City, London, or Los Angeles. Also, it’s not a tourist town, not at all, which has all sorts of various advantages: people are friendlier to foreigners, less theft and general petty crime that tourists tend to attract, lower prices, less crowded and less traffic, a higher ratio of natives-to-foreigners which is good since it’s the natives I’m interested in.

They’re going to have some interesting things going on during the time that I’ll be there, most prominently what’s commonly known simply as El Pilar, that is the Fiesta del Pilar that occurs during the week of October 12th, which is the celebration of Our Lady of the Pillar. This is one of the biggest holidays in Spain and, unlike other major ones like Christmas and New Years, it’s one that originated there and is a distinctly Spanish holiday, and the biggest celebration of it is in Zaragoza. This is because that’s where the appearance of the Virgin Mary that started this whole shindig happened and consequently it’s where the church dedicated to her (Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar) is located, as is the annual festival celebrating said appearance.

Additionally, the Catalan general election will be held in September while I’ll be there (Catalonia is right next door to Aragon, the region in which Zaragoza is located) and this particular election is going to be used as essentially a referendum to determine whether or not Catalonia wants to split from Spain and become its own sovereign nation. To put it mildly, this is kind of a big deal. You also have the Spanish general elections that might happen while I’m there though there’s no set date for those, they simply have to occur on or before December 20th of this year. Polls currently indicate that Catalonia probably will not vote to secede, but either way it’s gonna be a hell of a show! 😀

Lastly, as a nice bonus, it’s right next to Spain’s biggest and most famous wine region: La Rioja. As I mentioned above, wine is one of my hobbies and one of the things I look forward to doing there when I have a bit of spare time is learning about the local wines. This will, I really hope, include visiting to and touring some of the local bodegas (vineyards/wineries), of which there are some major ones in that particular region.

What are we going to get out of this?

Hopefully a lot more blog posts, lots of videos, and probably a book (I’m leaning towards either “A Texan in Spain” or “A Texan in Zaragoza”, my only fear with the latter being that nobody outside Spain even knows where Zaragoza is and therefore won’t know what country the book is about – what do you think?). I already explained, roughly, what the theme of these posts would be: learning a language in a foreign country, the culture and people of Spain, etc.

The videos…I’m not even sure what exactly they will be, I’m really leaning towards just making most of those culture-related, that is it’ll just be a video shot on the street of some aspect of Spanish culture or language that I thought was interesting and decided to whip out my phone/camcorder (still not sure which I’ll use) and make an impromptu video about. Yes, I will definitely be giving you video of me talking and interacting with natives, videos of the El Pilar festival, and anything else I think will be interesting to you.

What do you want?

What are you interested in hearing about? What information that I could glean for you while there would be valuable to you? Let me know in the comments or via e-mail (you can use my contact form or just e-mail me at andrew -at- traceylanguages.com).

Cheers,

Andrew

The post I’m going to Spain! appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.