Spanisch, somehow
Before I left, I had pictured myself chatting away in Spanish after two months. Now, a month and a half in, I order my coffee, and still sometimes nobody understands me. Zero as a starting point I had literally zero Spanish before this trip. No classes, no Spanish-speaking friends, no real contact with the language whatsoever. The plan was simple: start from scratch. In the weeks before leaving, motivation was high. I listened to Spanish podcasts, worked through language courses, drilled vocabulary cards, and watched Spanish films with subtitles, just to get a feel for how the language sounds. ...