Imagine you find yourself in the middle of a massive street party at 1:00am. Spanish speakers surround you. There are in jokes, colloquial expressions and stories flying in all directions.
You are intimated and lost in the language. What’s worse is as time wears on you start to understand less and less. You think to yourself, was all that study a waste of time or am I just really bad at this whole language thing?
That’s where we found ourselves on El Día De La Paloma. Surrounded by natives in the middle of the night in one of the biggest street parties of the year.
But how did we get there? Let’s go back to the start.
We had been living in Madrid for a number of weeks and we had a friend from home coming to visit us for a few days.
We wanted to give her the best possible experience for the few days she was there. She could speak Spanish so I didn’t think it would be a big problem to go to this party and throw her into the deep end.
Of course it would have been an awesome immersion experience, if you had been regularly building towards such as moment. But if it was your first day and you were feeling a little tired and jet lagged it could get intimidating very quickly.
In today’s episode of the Real Fast Spanish tips podcast I will tell the story of our experience on El Día De La Paloma and our visiting hometown friend.
I will tell a little about the festival and how we got out of the mess. I will also discuss, for me, the big take away from the experience. And also how that take away will help you with your Spanish mindset.
If you want to read a little more about El Día De La Paloma and the week long festival you can check out the wiki article here: Fiestas de la Paloma.
The inspiration for this podcast came out of tip 30, La Supercopa De España, which has been one of the most popular episodes to date.
Quote from the episode:
“Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.” – Ashleigh Brilliant
How will you apply the moral from today’s story?
Podcast: Play in new window
Leave a Reply