Happy St. Patty’s day from Medellin! I didn’t even bother asking the locals if they celebrated St. Patty’s day as it was obvious from the lack of green ropa today that they did not. Nevertheless, with no parties to attend or Guiness* to drink, today served as a great way to prep for my immersive Spanish class starting next week.
*B-Rad note: Guiness is an awful beverage, prove me wrong! I’m ecstatic I don’t need to chug Irish car bombs today.
In order to effectively learn a language I realize that I need to listen intently to speakers to even begin to comprehend what they are saying. Commonly at home, we passively listen, or ‘multitask’ during conversations as we also reply to texts or ‘me gusta’ pics on insta. That doesn’t even remotely work here let me tell you! Even with my full attention I find it hard to comprehend what people are saying and often rely on picking up one contextual word that will allow me to respond.
With that said, in addition to my Spanish class and diving into my language hacking Spanish book, I need additional resources that will help me develop an ear for speaking the language. So I’ve decided to listen to Spanish only podcasts for the next week to ensure all external stimuli are en Espanol (save my computer OS). This will constitute mostly Duolingo’s beginner stories as they provide transcripts of the conversations to help review after.
Further I purchased Paulo Coelho’s famed novel The Alchemist, or El Alquimista as I should say. If this proves too hard to decipher I’ll pick up that book about Harry P’s first year at wizard school since I already know the story it should be easier to understand. This means a lot Pitbull, Enrique, & J. Balvin playlists on Spotify for the next week, I’m probably most excited for this! Lastly, if I want to Netflix before bed it will have to be in Espanol, so queue up the Telenovela’s fam!!
In all this next week will be fully dedicated to aprendo Espanol so that I get the most out of this immersive class. If you are not a fan of the Brad Ventures website design, sorry you are going to have to wait another week for me to tinker and redesign the site! I’m sure you can find some other sites to visit in the meantime..
Today’s Work Views
Adios!