Learning Spanish with Duolingo

As part of my ex-pat ambitions, I've been learning Spanish. Several of the places I've explored and will be exploring in the near future are those where Spanish is the dominant language, so I've taken to studying it. 

I've been using a free app, Duolingo, to do this. You can use this app to not only learn Español, but dozens of languages, without paying a penny if you don't want to (like a lot of opt-in products, you get more features if you do subscribe). 

I've typically spent just five to ten minutes per day with the app, but today I went on a bit of spree and worked with it for about a half hour. 

My recommendation: speak out loud the words and sentences you are reviewing as you go, and when prompted to type in translations, use your phone's speech-to-text feature instead. That kind of practice really helps to cement in your brain the new language you are attempting to pick up. In my experience, this makes the lessons more fun, too. 

Maybe some day I'll return to here, Bogota, Colombia, to try it again with more language skills under my belt (and probably Cartagena; I really enjoyed my brief visit to Bogota, but it is at a relatively high elevation, 8600 feet, so I'll be keeping it on my "Southern Hemisphere Summer" list as ¡yo no quiero estamo frío! :)  ).

A panoramic shot I took of Bogota from the monastery atop Cerro de Monserrate, 27 December 2018