Past 3 days have been diving into Espanol and such I’ve limited the time spent reading, writing, and talking in English. Class each day is from 8:30am – 1:30pm, despues I’ve headed back to the co-working spot to continue studying Language hacking & completing Fluenz exercies.
Having a systematic routine the past 3 days in a foreign city feels well… for lack of a better word, ‘foreign’. The first 7 days here felt like vacation. But once the days start repeating and my 2nd Tuesday had passed, things began to slow down. I’ve noticed a defined route I follow each morning to Spanish class, I sit in the same seat at class, and afterwards sit in the same spot at the co-working space. Only then when deciding on dinner do I break the routine to eat somewhere new.
Routines define us and often we aren’t even cognizant of these patterns we continuously deploy day in and out. These all developed naturally for me here because we often go to places of familiarity, aka automate the mundane to focus on the task at hand… That or were constantly on our phones distracted (probably this). But this brings up the necessity of prioritization. Yes, I want to define my ideal day, see all that Medellin has to offer, and launch some micro ventures. But this week the focus is on maximizing my learning in Spanish. 80% of this class material I’ve seen before but never deemed important enough in my life to work really hard at learning. So now I have mucho ground to make up to at least become proficient enough to maximize my travels.
The next two days will be focused on studying and maximizing my time spent learning and speaking Espanol.
-Rad B
Thoughts on blogging – Writing is very easy when your blog’s audience is yourself. This serves more as a notepad to collate my daily thoughts and muses as well as chronicle my trip. I’m sure if the intended audience was peers & colleagues most of my paragraphs would find their way to the trash bin. There’s something liberating in debriefing the day’s events and mulling over time spent.