Survival Spanish: Five quick tips for rapid language learning

Welcome back to the Survival Spanish series! Having recently passed the one year mark learning the Spanish language, I’m going to mix up the format a little and offer some practical advice for learning. These nuggets of advice apply to my own experience with Spanish, however I hope (and expect, to some extent) that they will help in any language-learning escapades.

10 things I learned in my first month abroad

Well I finally did it. I left my office job, handed in the notice for my flat, and went off travelling in Spain. This trip is a lot of things, ambition and folly in equal measure. Certainly not a drastic undertaking on a global scale, but a scary enough proposition for many in the privileged “West”: having to deal with a non-Anglophone society and being removed from our carefully-curated circles of allies. Here are some observations from Month One: