I firmly believe that to learn Spanish, it really helps to either move in with a Spaniard! or have Spanish speaking friends AND if possible ones for whom English is not their first language, and preferably its worse than your Spanish. I have English girlfriends with whom I could practice my Spanish but however good my intentions are we always end up having a good goss in English and let´s face it why wouldn´t you?

So today I met up with a lovely lady from Russia who is married to a Spaniard, and did actually manage to speak some sentences in Spanish! I have tapes that I am using, a great course by Pimsleur that I got when I was in the States, but it is nothing like trying to have a conversation, as in real life everything is much faster, and words turn up that you haven´t heard before unlike on the tapes where all the talking revolves around words they have just taught you!

I definitely need to do this more often and my friend hopefully is benefitting from practicing her English as a reward for putting up with my faltering Spanish. Also hopefully I will be able to report further on my improvement and soon. I think the important thing is to just get some words out and not worry if the tenses etc. come out a bit wrong.

The other thing that was interesting and lovely to see today was how fantastic my friend´s husband was with their 2 little babies. It seems to me that Spanish men are so much happier spending time with their little kids in a completely non embarrassed, natural way than their English counterparts who often still seem to think its all a bit girlie. Anyway I won´t say too much on this as I don´t have children and I have mentioned it before, but I do love to see it. Sunday mornings in particular seem to be such a family time here, with couples having breakfast with their young families, whereas we Brits are so often recovering from the night before.

Anyway that’s my thought for the day …

I´m off to find my little cat and chill-out.