Life is such an amazing and beautiful journey. The older we get, the less we realize we know. I’ve been processing a lot what it means to be the foreigner … the outsider. Before I moved abroad to Spain, I envisioned eating good food, drinking good wine, traveling and meeting wonderful people. All of those things have definitely happened. In fact, I’d say a good 80-90% of my time is just that. However what I wasn’t expecting was feeling like the outsider from time to time. The other. The one who is different and calls attention because she’s not like the rest.
Of course I figured it would happen a bit since I’m not from Spain. But what I wasn’t expecting was that I would feel identified as country or nationality first more than just a few times. Everything in this world has a purpose and I believe all experiences can be used for good. More than anything, this has really taught me a lot about the world and the experience of others who are in this role of the other. This experience of being the other will help me to be more compassionate towards others who are different. I would like to take you on my journey of how I arrived here.
I live in the wonderful city of Granada, Spain. This is one of the most visited cities in Spain and yet I find that I often take it for granted. Doing photoshoots like this remind me of how lucky I am to have this experience. I recently found this little black dress on sale and thought it would be perfect for a photoshoot a sunset.
I always seem to have a lot on my mind. Between planning lessons at the schools I work at, planning my private lessons, planning my online classes and blogging, there seems to be a never-ending list of deadlines and things I have to remember to do. There’s just something about writing it all down. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s one of the many benefits of using a planner.
Ever since high school, I’ve always had either a notebook or a planner on me at all times. As a writer, I just never know when the moment will strike and I need to write something down. The Old English Company has quite a few planners that I’ve been digging. I love the simple design of them.
Your smile is often the first thing people notice about you. It can make or break that first impression. However if you don’t feel confident about your smile, it can feel a little daunting to just smile all the time. However with the Smile Brilliant Kit, you can smile fearlessly, as they say.
My smile
While I’ve never been someone to necessarily hide my smile, my smile is also not perfect. My teeth aren’t 100% white and I have a stain that I think comes from my days with braces. So when Smile Brilliant reached out to me about trying out their kit, I figured “why not?” Your smile really can never been too brilliant.
Before I started the treatment, my teeth weren’t horrible but they also weren’t perfect.
Hey all! Last week I spent a few days exploring Lagos, Portugal. If you have never been there, Lagos is a town on the beach in the Southern region of Algarve. I stayed with Top City Hostel for three days and had a great time exploring everything. The beaches in Lagos are truly unique.
On my last evening in town, my friend Jade and I from It’s time to explore shot some photos in the town and along the beach. So here’s a little roundup of just that! Also I’m co-hosting a linkup today! The details about that are below! Fashion bloggers, feel free to link up your posts!
Hostel survival tips are pretty essential for making the most of budget travel. I have plenty. As many of my readers know, I prefer hostels over anything else when I travel. They save me money and have introduced me to some really cool people from all over the world. I work as an English teacher in Spain. While I certainly make more than enough money to live comfortably in Granada (Spain is cheap and basically all the restaurants serve tapas with a drink), traveling can be a tad bit trickier. Either you have those folks who saved up for years before moving to Spain and jet off every weekend or you have people like me. People who choose to travel on whatever is left over each month and the extra cash earned from private lessons taught to adorable children in the evenings.
Who here is a blogger or influencer? Who wants to collaborate more with brands but just doesn’t know how? I know that feeling and I know it well. I too have been there. What I have found is that there are so many ways to find sponsored opportunities and collaborations as an influencer. It’s just about having the right app and using the right platform. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about the Muses influencer app.
What is the Muses influencer app?
Well I’m so glad you asked! It’s a free application for your phone where you can connect with other bloggers and brands. Everyday people are posting new opportunities. I have found several legitimate opportunities on the app, so I thought I would share with you all the 5 reasons to download the Muses influencer app.
I remember the first time I really felt what it was like to be a foreigner. I was in Nicaragua working as a volunteer and living with this crazy American nun. Seriously … she was legit likely clinically insane. That’s a story for another time, however. I had gone with my American roommate to a shop. She wanted to try on a bra and the employee wouldn’t let her. We were curious as to why she couldn’t.
“It’s probably because you’re an extranjera (foreigner)” said the sister when we explained it to her later. “They probably think that you’re dirty and haven’t showered.”
A lot of foreigners that come to Nicaragua do so to backpack. They often wear loose-fitting hippy pants because of the hot weather. It was amusing to me that that is likely the stereotype that many Nicaraguans have of us gringos. They’d likely be amazed to find people in three-piece suits back home.
As I sit down to write this at 3:30 in the afternoon, I find myself in quite an appropriate state to write this blog post. Today is a holiday here in Spain, meaning no work. That also means that I went out last night. So I sit here still in my pajamas with an un-washed face and disheveled hair. I’m nursing a tiny hang over. I think the coffee is helping.
Going out here in Spain is quite different than going out back home in the United States. If you really go out, don’t plan anything around 10 a.m. the next day. You will likely come home between the hours of 6-8 a.m.
For the past year, I have always thought a diary-style post about a typical night out in Spain would be fun to write. Several weeks ago, my friend Carolina invited myself and some friends to have dinner at her house and then go out. I documented the entire night. Enjoy!
Recently, I wrote a blog post about why Spain is a great country to learn Spanish in. I loved receiving all of your comments. I had lots of people saying things such as “yeah it’s really best if you can go to another country to learn and be immersed in the language.” While I do believe that that is one great way to learn, it’s not the only way. So I thought it was time to let you all in on a little secret.
I didn’t learn Spanish in Spain.
In fact upon arrival, I routinely shocked locals with how well I spoke after only a few days to a week in their country. I’m not saying this to toot my own horn. It was just a fact that after working a bilingual job in the United States for a year. I was comfortable having conversations in Spanish because I had been having conversations in Spanish in my own country for an entire year. Now these conversations were nowhere near perfect. I of course still made mistakes and had things to improve. We all do with a second language.
I want to tell you this story because I know for many of us, a move overseas is simply not possible right now. I don’t want you to think that all hopes of learning a second language are lost simply because you cannot make a move. So here’s my story of how I became fluent in Spanish while living in the United States.
It all started with a coffeeshop
It was 2014 and I had decided to spend a year volunteering in Nicaragua. While I had learned some Spanish in high school, I hardly remembered any of it and I surely could not form sentences. However I wanted to be able to communicate when I arrived, so I decided I would take a class or find a tutor.
One day, I was at my neighborhood coffeeshop. I was just browsing the bulletin board of flyers when I found a flyer for Coffeeshop Spanish. The idea was that they provided one-on-one tutoring in a coffeeshop. “Well I do need to learn Spanish,” I thought. So I tore the information off and sent them an e-mail. I ended up meeting with them once a week for the next six months.
Then I went to Nicaragua …
Coffeeshop Spanish provided me with a great foundation. However things were not easy. It was hard for me to understand. I was one of the weird and rare cases where I could speak decently well, but struggled to understand what was being said. Furthermore, the environment I lived and worked in in Nicaragua was very unsupportive. You can read more about what happened in Nicaragua here.
I also made the classic foreigner mistake in Nicaragua. All of the friends I made were native English speakers. It’s just often so much easier to find people who speak your language when in a new place. While these women were wonderful people, I wasn’t speaking Spanish with them.
Then life happened. Due to some personal, family things, I returned to the United States. As luck would have it, I landed a bilingual job coordinating an ESL program for Hispanic adults in my community. Su Casa Hispanic Center was having a hard time filling their AmeriCorps position for this role. I warned them that my Spanish was not perfect and that I was still learning. That really didn’t seem to be a problem for them. They were happy to have someone who was willing to try.
Like night and day
Su Casa Hispanic Center was the place where I really became fluent in Spanish. First, it was an incredibly supportive environment to learn and practice Spanish. This is incredibly important when learning another language. The more comfortable and supported you feel, the more confident you will be in speaking the language. Everyone on staff at Su Casa was required to be bilingual in Spanish and English. About half the staff were Hispanic and half were Americans. My wonderful Hispanic coworkers came from countries such as Peru, Mexico and Venezuela. They all understood completely if I struggled or didn’t understand as they had all been there with their English. And of course my American coworkers too could understand as they had all started from 0 at some point with their Spanish.
My clients were also absolutely wonderful. The majority were from Mexico and Guatemala, with other South American countries being represented here and there. If they called the office about English classes, the call would get transferred to me. I was their first contact with our education department. Even though I likely made lots of grammar mistakes and had an accent, I tried my best to be friendly and genuine. I think that they could feel that genuine warmth, even over the telephone.
I also got to know many of them in person as I was there when they came for English class. No one was ever rude about my Spanish. They were just grateful that they could call our office in their native language. They sincerely appreciated the effort I was making to communicate with them. After leaving that position, several of my clients have friended me on Facebook. They love seeing my photos of life in Spain and talk with me from time to time. It’s always good to hear from them.
I would say that around March I really felt fluent in the language. That was about 5-6 months into the job. I think too the work that I was doing really pushed me to speak as well as I could. It was just so cool to see what difference I was making in my community because I could speak Spanish.
Myself and my old Su Casa coworkers. Wonderful women
What factors drove me to fluency
I was surrounded by Spanish 40 hours a week. Even if I didn’t have many phone calls that day and it wasn’t a day we had English class, I heard Spanish everywhere. When I did speak Spanish, I often didn’t have the option to speak English. Most of my clients coming to English class for the first time knew only a few words or phrases in English.
When you have no option but to speak the language, you learn quickly. And I don’t mean you learn everything. What you learn are tools to communicate. You learn how to ask people to slow down or repeat things. You learn how to say what you want to say in a different way if you can’t say it exactly as you would in English. And you also learn to describe things if don’t know the exact word in Spanish. These are all tools I still use today when communicating in Spain.
I also stated above that I was in a supportive environment. One thing that Coffeeshop Spanish, Su Casa Hispanic Center and the country of Spain have it common is how well they have supported me in my Spanish journey. Everyone has been very encouraging with my Spanish, always reassuring me that I was doing a great job.
It’s all about YOU
The thing about moving to a country that speaks the language is that you still have to be intentional. Many people just assume that going there is enough. Well it’s not. As mentioned above, in Nicaragua all of my friends were English speakers. I wasn’t speaking any Spanish with them. There are English speakers I know where I live in Granada who only hang out with other English speakers. They all want to befriend more Spanish people, but are often intimidated at how to actually do it. Also Spaniards have this stereotype of moving to London and only befriending Spaniards for this very same reason. Upon arrival, they find it easy to just hang out with each other.
Think about it. If you live in Spain but have American roommates, American friends and speak English with your coworkers (since most of us English teachers work with bilingual teachers), how much Spanish are you really practicing? Other than ordering at a restaurant, not much.
Before I moved to Spain, I knew how easy it would be to find English speakers to befriend and to live with. And don’t get me wrong, I do have American and British friends here in Granada. While I never say no to a new friend, I knew that to make Spanish friends, I would have to be intentional. I would have to set up my life so that I was interacting in Spanish daily.
So the first thing I did was seek out a flat with Spaniards. In fact, I only looked at flats with Spanish roommates. I then made a point to do things where I would meet Spaniards and then pursue friendships with the people I met. As I wrote in my post about learning Spanish in Spain, once you do meet a Spaniard you like, it’s not hard to befriend them. They’re very open people who are always down for coffee, tapas or a night of dancing. Furthermore if they want to practice their English, it’s even easier. You can set up a nice regular exchange where you practice both.
What you can do
At the end of the day, learning a language is all about initiative. No one learns it for you. You are the one who puts in the effort. So here are a few ways you can learn and practice a language in your country.
Volunteer. In the United States, there’s a Hispanic population in virtually every city. Many people think Latinos only live in California, Texas and Florida. However this is false. I worked at Su Casa Hispanic Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. No one thinks that there are Spanish speakers in Ohio. Wrong. Simply search on google to find an organization in your community that helps the Hispanic community. Call them and ask if you can volunteer. I know in the case of Su Casa, we were always looking for volunteers. This doesn’t just stop with the Hispanic community. If there’s a significant population from a certain country in your city, there are likely opportunities to volunteer with them. In my city, we also had a lot of refugees from French-speaking African countries. There were organizations that worked with that population as well.
Join a meet-up. There are meet-up groups for everything these days. So, there are often meet-up groups to practice languages. If you cannot find exactly what you’re looking for, google it. Some cities might not use the exact website meetup.com but might use something similar. Also lots of cities have sister cities all over the world. I know Cincinnati has something like seven. Perhaps your city has a sister city in a country that speaks the language you’re learning. You could get in contact with that committee or organization in your city to see if they do anything or know of anything. From a meet up, you could end up befriending someone to practice even more.
The internet. Guys we live in such a cool time. You can learn any language you want from the comfort of your own home. There are people all over the world that will teach you their language over Skype. I teach adults in Turkey English over the Internet and it’s amazing. Many of them speak very well and have never left Turkey. Here are a few websites to try: Verbling, italki
Youtube. A big part of learning a foreign language is listening. The more you listen to people speaking the language, the more you will be able to understand. You will even begin to hear the language more slowly and begin to think in it with enough immersion. There are youtubers from all over the world. Find a few that you like who speak the language you want to learn. Make a point of watching a video every day. I also want to shout out my favorite bilingual youtuber: Superholly. If you’re an English speaker learning Spanish, she’s wonderful. Also if you’re a Spanish speaker learning English, she’s wonderful for that as well!
Do you want it?
At the end of the day, I’m a big believer that only you can learn a language. No one can do it for you. You have to take the time to listen to the language being spoken. You have to seek out people to practice it with. Even in Spain, I had to consciously set up my life to where I would be speaking Spanish daily. I was the one who sought out Spanish roommates over American ones. I was the one who sought out Spanish friends over friends who spoke my language. I’m so glad that I did it because I now have such an invaluable skill.
If you want to learn a second language, the tools are there for you. It just depends on how much you want it.
