Didn’t these good-looking guys have better things to do

How are your New Year’s resolutions going?

Love notes from Siel is a weekly newsletter from Siel, who’s currently traveling around Europe. If you love it, subscribe for free.

Dear friend —

It’s already almost spring. How are your New Year’s resolutions going? 

One loose goal I set for 2022 was to learn to speak Spanish fluently. I thought this would just happen naturally as I traveled through Spanish-speaking countries — but after five months in Latin America, the only thing I could do in Spanish with relative confidence was order food at restaurants.

What to do? They say the fastest way to become fluent in a language is by speaking it — or at least attempting to speak it — as much as possible. So when I got to Madrid in late February, I looked for conversation partners. And thanks to the internet, I found not just one, but three Spaniards eager to help me with my Spanish so they could practice their English!

Interestingly, all three were guys. (I mostly reached out to women, and none responded — come on, ladies!!!). The first: a 25-year-old guy who lived with his parents, drove a Porsche, yet worked for Mercedes. The second: an economist in intense training for a triathlon. The third: a quadrilingual college student studying aerospace engineering. 

All of the guys were already pretty fluent English speakers. In fact, none of them seemed all that concerned about practicing their English. Instead, they wanted to know if I’d seen all the main sights of Madrid, if I’d tried the typical Spanish cuisine, if I was making friends. And they seemed to have a lot of time on their hands, willing to meet as often as I could.

This puzzled me. Didn’t these good-looking guys have better things to do than teach Spanish for free to a random woman more than a decade their senior — who was leaving town in two weeks besides?

But I wasn’t complaining. I didn’t know how to anyway, in Spanish. Instead we went on long walks to explore the Lavapies neighborhood, to watch the sunset from Templo de Debod, to take in the rooftop views from Circulo de Bellas Artes. We found tiny restaurants and ate patatas bravas and tortilla de patatas and boquerones en vinagre and bocadillo de calamares and torrijas. And we held simple conversations of this sort:

“Has corrido un triatlón en el pasado?”

“No.”

In the end, one did try to kiss me. Maybe I should have expected that. We’ve remained friends though, and I’m to stay conversation partners with all three of them via Zoom as I continue traveling through Europe. Maybe in a few more months, I’ll actually be fluent — 

I found Madrid beautiful — El Retiro especially — but I also found it a bit cold, literally and figuratively. Everyone was polite, kind even, but after the warmth of the people in Latin America, I found the culture a bit aloof. Not forbidding or mean or rude — just restrained.

But now I’m in Italy. Send me your Italy travel tips — and if you’ve been to Spain, let me know what your impressions were. One day I do hope to go back to visit the other places my conversations partners recommended — ​​Barcelona, Valencia, Galicia, San Sebastián, Granada….

Love,

Siel

At Puerto de Acalá, Madrid

Three links you might love — conversation partners edition:

1. HelloTalk is an app that lets you find willing conversation partners to practice different languages around the world. To find partners near you, you need to upgrade to the paid version — or just wait for people who’ve paid to contact you. I did the latter!

2. Conversation Exchange is a website that lets you find conversation partners near you. Upside: Lots of people are on it! Downside: It’s slow and clunky to use and could seriously use a redesign!

3. I haven’t tried Glossika yet, but I’m convinced I should after reading John McWhorter’s recommendation in the New York Times. Anyone had success with this one?

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