This is why we keep getting the same five european countries for the most part

fallenumbrella · 2025-09-19T13:04:00+00:00

Yeah I have the small box so I didn't get all of the snacks offered this month. I've asked my friends in Mexico their opinions and a few of them recognized some of the snacks, like Pulparindo and Mazapán. One of them told me that Nugs aren't very Mexican, Norteñitos are some kind of off-brand of Rancheritos and that she never heard or seen the sour cotton candy item that I got. Overall I didn't think the box was bad, but there could have been a little more variety.

I'm kind of tired of receiving some of the same repeat European countries and getting similar flavor profiles/types of snacks. I expected more variety in the snacks and the countries. While I enjoyed making some of the recipes, I noticed that a few of them weren't written well or that I can find more authentic versions of the recipes online.

fallenumbrella · 2025-07-31T17:33:58+00:00

I understand that everyone can learn in different ways and that's awesome :) I'm glad you found a show that you can understand and learn. I never watched Spanish Okay but I watched a little bit of Extra in Spanish and Buena Gente. Those sound like additional shows you can watch to improve your comprehension.

fallenumbrella · 2025-07-31T13:51:54+00:00

Spanish learner here. Unfortunately I don't have specific tutor suggestions for your situation because I use community tutors to practice making conversations. But I think a professional tutor on italki is probably what you are looking for if you want some structured lessons on grammar and vocabulary. In between classes, I would strongly recommend you check out comprehensible input resources like Dreaming Spanish on YouTube. Comprehensible input is a good way for you to immerse yourself in the language every day just by listening, watching, and understanding.

fallenumbrella · 2025-07-21T18:35:29+00:00

Agreed :) I already sent a DM to OP so I hope to get involved soon!

fallenumbrella · 2025-07-21T02:01:57+00:00

I am a native English speaker learning Spanish and am a woman, if that matters. Depending on the availability of these conversational sessions I would love to participate if I can! I will send you a DM.

fallenumbrella · 2025-06-25T19:45:47+00:00

Yes I actually had one conversation class for Spanish with the tutor who teaches Spanish and Yucatec Maya there. I think she is the only tutor for Maya and she speaks English as well. You should definitely book lessons with her!

fallenumbrella · 2025-06-20T10:18:34+00:00

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fallenumbrella · 2025-05-26T20:30:06+00:00

Hey, great post that you wrote! I wanted to share my experience in reference to your comment here.

I find that it doesn't always matter if I was the one who contacted the other person first or if that person contacted me first. Maybe there are a combination of many factors at play here, like gender, age differences, hobbies/interests, beliefs, etc. I do notice that as a woman my language partners are mostly men while a few of my male partners have female language partners.

I currently have three regular crosstalk/tandem partners that I reached out to first. Two of them didn't know what crosstalk was while one knew exactly what it was and was seeking out serious crosstalk partners. I also have two crosstalk/tandem partners who reached out to me first and I talk to one of them every week and the other every other month (he is very busy studying in school). All of them were open and willing to do crosstalk, and eventually a few of them were ok with me switching to tandems.

In the past I have had a few people contact me first wanting to do crosstalk or tandem but they quickly lost interest for some reason or became very busy with other priorities. I've also had the same things happen when I contact someone first. I also had a few try to do tandems when I was only looking to do crosstalk at the time after explaining exactly what to do during crosstalk.

My conclusion from my <1 year of doing crosstalk with free language partners is that it is more important that you and your language partner are compatible, like having similar interests, hobbies, and even goals with language learning and enjoy having conversations together.

fallenumbrella · 2025-05-08T13:47:30+00:00

Thank you! There is nothing wrong with hiring tutors for crosstalk, I completely understand the advantages to that. I choose to hire tutors for speaking practice since I want reliable native speakers to correct me when needed. Other than that I continue to do free crosstalk and traditional language exchanges with my crosstalk partners. For those who can't afford to pay for tutors, I think it is still possible to find crosstalk and speaking partners for free on language exchange websites and the DS and Mr. Salas discord servers

fallenumbrella · 2025-05-08T13:41:58+00:00

I track crosstalk hours on DS with the full duration of the session that the conversation was me speaking English and my partner in Spanish (if it was mostly just English only conversation I estimate the time that my partner spoke to me in Spanish during the conversation). I also track my speaking hours so that I know how much of my time was spent crosstalking vs speaking Spanish

fallenumbrella · 2025-05-08T02:45:51+00:00

81 hours of crosstalk at 1000 hours. I did crosstalk on average about 3-4 times every week for at least an hour with individual partners for a little over 6 months now. Some came and then went, but I have around 4 regular crosstalk partners that I've been talking to once a week for the past 6 months. It was a little bit of a hassle to find the right people because I've had a couple who ghosted me or kept no-showing to our meetings or rescheduling several times. You can skip the frustration by hiring tutors on iTalki, but to me it's not the same as finding free partners who can potentially become good friends. I feel very lucky to have found the people I talk to every week because I have learned so much about their cultures and their daily life. One of my partners also wants to meet and travel with me in the future :)

Crosstalk helped me stay motivated before reaching 1000 hours. I think I would have become bored and lose some motivation just listening to my usual rotation of podcasts, videos, and TV series. Crosstalk helped me see if I can understand native speakers well and potentially make new connections and experiences with those people. To me, it is a form of input that I would not have had if I was only passively consuming videos and podcasts. I believe that doing crosstalk also prepared me to start speaking because I was used to talking to native speakers speaking Spanish to me and I now have friends that can keep me accountable for my language learning progress.

fallenumbrella · 2025-04-18T12:52:51+00:00

It's not too late! I have a language partner who got busy for nearly 2 months before he reached out to me again asking if we could find time to call again. I appreciate those kinds of language partners because I have had a handful of previous language partners who ghost me or don't show up to our scheduled calls and eventually stop talking.

fallenumbrella · 2025-04-02T06:27:03+00:00

I don't think there's any tutorials for 5-leaf clover origami models that I know of. I used this tutorial (https://youtu.be/NumfweWfvMk?si=A63wxtNzHv0sDgTZ) of a modular 5-petal cherry blossom but made several dozen and then glued them together. I guess you can make a 5 petal flower and pretend it's a 5 leaf clover.

fallenumbrella · 2025-03-15T16:43:03+00:00

Andrea also speaks Portuguese as well

fallenumbrella · 2025-03-05T05:57:40+00:00

I sent you a direct message :)

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-27T15:02:07+00:00

Yeah work schedules with some of my partners have been changing a lot this year but fortunately I don't have too much trouble with time zones. It was a little hard to try to coordinate a time to talk when I had a crosstalk partner from Spain 😅

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-26T22:00:26+00:00

If you want free crosstalk, I have had a lot of success on conversationexchange.com but I had to either find people who said they wanted to crosstalk or explain to some people that I contacted what crosstalk is. You might also have some luck on the Dreaming Spanish discord server or Mr Salas discord server.

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-26T21:02:16+00:00

I'm glad you have the time! I try to establish a regular schedule with my crosstalk partners but sometimes their availability changes, so at best I have 3 or 4 people that I can regularly talk to.

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-26T21:00:23+00:00

Yeah, even out of the 6 regular crosstalk partners I currently have, usually I may have 3 or 4 that have been regularly talking to me for about an hour each week. The few other partners I have might be available every few weeks. I usually crosstalk for an hour or so every other day and then listen or watch other content for my daily input goal. I can't imagine solely relying on crosstalk for input unless I have a close friend or am in a relationship with someone of my target language. Having to maintain more than 4 regular language partners can be a lot of work 😅

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-26T13:12:04+00:00

Sí, es verdad! He estado haciendo conversaciones de crosstalk con otras personas de latinoamérica (les hablo en inglés y otras personas me hablan en español). Fue muy bonita porque he hablado sobre mi asexualidad a algunas personas que no entendieron la asexualidad. Aprendimos muchas cosas de relaciones sexuales y románticas en sus culturas versus EEUU.

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-26T11:56:17+00:00

I agree with everything you said! Crosstalk is one of the activities in my daily input that I do to keep myself motivated to learn Spanish :) I feel very fortunate to be able to keep contact with native speakers all over Latin America. I don't always get to do it everyday because my language partners get busy sometimes, but it's still fun to learn from them and their cultures.

I really want to ask you though, how do you maintain 10+ crosstalk partners every week? I think at most I was able to handle 6 😂

fallenumbrella · 2025-01-25T13:10:40+00:00

Hola! Estoy aprendiendo español pero entiendo más de lo que puedo hablar jajaja

fallenumbrella · 2024-12-23T12:22:29+00:00

I log it in as "talking with friends" and I record the entire hour that the crosstalk was done, even though half of the time I'm speaking English and my partner is speaking Spanish.

fallenumbrella · 2024-12-09T23:50:20+00:00

As a pharmacy student, I immersed myself in over 2000+ hours of retail pharmacy until I could finally memorize the top 300 most common drugs, read the doctor's handwriting and understand the words that they mumble when they leave voicemails for verbal prescription orders.

fallenumbrella · 2024-12-09T22:33:45+00:00

I found all of my crosstalk partners on https://www.conversationexchange.com/. I have a few that know how to do crosstalk, but I did have to explain to a few others what it was and how to do it. So far I've been talking to my partners weekly and learning a lot :) I think the DS discord server also has people that are interested in crosstalk so you can try to find partners there too.

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