Portable, any Spanish speaking city
Portable
Full file · 8 sections
I live in places instead of visiting them. Peru, Colombia, Portugal, Mexico. Teaching English, volunteering, learning the language on the ground, then writing up what it actually took: the combi you need, the price people really pay, the office hours nobody posts. I write the same field notes at Vibing with Locals.
- Total cost
- —
- Days needed
- 1
- Go between
- Any month
- Monthly cost
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Five phrases, in order, and one rule: order everything in the local language. Hold the rule for four weeks and it is 120 to 160 real conversations. Break it and it is zero.
8 of 8 sections are free to read.
The Verdict
Five phrases and one rule. Buenas instead of hola, usted until they switch, and every coffee, meal and cab in the local language. Four weeks of ordinary errands is 120 to 160 real conversations if you hold it.
Same cafe, same order, in Spanish, every morning
Getting There
Nothing to travel to. The reps are already in your day and you are currently wasting them. Count what you do on an ordinary day in a foreign city. A coffee. Lunch. A cab or a bus. A shop. Asking someone where something is. That is five to seven exchanges before anything interesting has happened. Thirty to forty micro conversations a week, from errands alone. Four weeks in one country is 120 to 160 real reps if you hold the rule. It is zero if you do not, and zero is the normal outcome, because English is always available and always easier. The route, such as it is: use the same cafe, the same shop, the same lunch place for a week. Repetition with the same person is worth more than variety, because by day four they know you and the exchange gets longer on its own.
The Month
Every month works. There is no season for this and no weather that stops it. The only timing variable worth knowing is tourist density where you are staying. In high season in a tourist district, the switch to English happens more often, because the staff are dealing with fifty foreigners a day and English is faster for them. In low season, in the same bar, the same person will happily stay in Spanish with you. So if you have a choice, go in the shoulder months. Not for the weather. For the patience. Time of day matters more than month. Order your coffee at eight in the morning when the cafe has three people in it, not at one when there is a queue. Quiet hours produce conversations, busy hours produce transactions.
The Receipt
This one is genuinely free and I am not going to pad a receipt to make the section look full. The five phrases cost nothing. The rule costs nothing. You were buying the coffee either way. The only money attached to it is the tutor that should sit underneath it, and that number is in the 48 Hour Language Partner brief: 12 dollars an hour, four times a week, from Medellin.
What Went Wrong
I broke the rule most often when I was tired, and always at the worst moment. Late arrival, long day, a cab driver asking a question I half understood, and I would just say it in English because it was 11pm. Every one of those was a rep I had already paid for and threw away. The bigger failure was letting waiters win. Someone switches to English, I switch too, we both relax, and the transaction is over in twenty seconds. Comfortable and completely useless. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that si no te molesta, prefiero practicar mi espanol almost never gets a bad reaction. People like it. Twice it turned into the longest conversation of my day. I also used hola for months before I noticed nobody around me was saying it. Buenas is what people actually open with, and switching one word changed how often the exchange continued past the greeting. And I got usted wrong in both directions. Too formal with someone my own age at a hostel, which made the whole thing stiff, then too informal with a woman in her sixties at a bakery in Trujillo, which I watched land. She was polite about it. She also did not warm up. One honest limit on the numbers. The 120 to 160 figure is arithmetic from my own days, not a measured study. It is five to seven errands a day, times seven, times four weeks. Your city and your routine will move it. The direction is right even if the number is rough. Last thing. This works in any language. I held the same rule for ten days in Lisbon with Portuguese, which I barely speak, and got the same result. The method is not about Spanish at all.
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