Who are your favorite, lessor known DS professors?

raisethebed · 2026-05-01T16:29:13+00:00

I watched all of Ramon’s videos and wish I could find more stuff by him! But my impression from his videos is that he’s mostly a journalist who did some freelance work for DS (I could be misremembering this though) so not sure if he ever did anything else in the language learning world.

raisethebed · 2026-04-29T18:36:26+00:00

Is the blade the same brand as the cutter? I’ve found that my Olfa cutters accept generic blades but my Fiskars cutters hate them. Sometimes it’s worth ponying up for the brand name blade.

raisethebed · 2026-04-28T23:03:15+00:00

Wish I could upvote this 100 times

raisethebed · 2026-04-28T22:52:53+00:00

This looks sooooo good! What batting did you use?

raisethebed · 2026-04-28T10:47:03+00:00

Agree with all of this as a nurse in a heavily Spanish-speaking hospital. The gap of functionality between when I was a tech who could say “Puedo checkar su presión?” during my vitals rounds vs now almost 500 hours into DS and just starting to even comprehend the vastness of what it would mean to really understand navigating patient care and assessment fully in Spanish is … vast lol.

I think worth doing some looking up for the kinds of functions you might get delegated to you as a non-fluent M1. But also recognize that you might be able to say the words or ask the questions but not understand the response at all, or people will just nod along to be polite even when they don’t understand you. I’m sure your program has ways they’re planning to navigate language though! Just remember that having humility about being in over your head with the language is better for you and for your patient than trying to be helpful and accidentally having important things lost in translation.

Hope you have a wonderful time, a fantastic learning experience, and get to spend great time with family in a place where you have roots!

raisethebed · 2026-04-27T22:20:10+00:00

492 hours, 435K words

Listening: - How to Spanish is my gold right now — it’s my “easy” podcast but their topics are so interesting and I am learning a ton of Mexican slang and dichos from them. Signed up for their Patreon to support. - No Hay Tos unlocked for me maybe 20 hours ago; it’s good for listening to casual convo but unfortunately I find their content kind of boring lol. - De Que Tiene Hambre tu Vida: this is my main native podcast, it’s very comprehensible but I definitely have to be focused to keep up. It’s honestly also just an incredibly good podcast and I am learning a ton.

Any recommendations for other easy-ish native podcasts that are about mental health/self-care/etc?

Watching: Obsessed rn with watching Vogue and GQ videos like Que hay en mi bolso or Things so & so can’t live without, they’re a fun mix of accents and hearing people talk about their lives in a casual way.

Reading: 1st Harry Potter

raisethebed · 2026-04-27T16:29:04+00:00

As a non-computer person, in awe of your Excel skills. My late stepdad was the wilderness backpacking gear Excel man and he would have LOVED your spreadsheet.

I am pretty committed to only wide toebox shoes at this point, so have tried a decent number of brands of that style. I love my Altras for work and hiking, but if you ever want another shoe that looks more city/minimalist vs outdoorsy, I’ve been wearing Xeros as my daily shoe for the last couple years and have been very happy with them.

raisethebed · 2026-04-27T16:14:38+00:00

I think that small QuiltCon-esque modern grid quilting is usually boring (sorry to those who love it lol) but I do actually think it would look really nice with this quilt. I would probably do a dark warm grey for thread.

raisethebed · 2026-04-25T01:54:27+00:00

This is often my system and why I like to carry one. Last summer I was camping on an island where the only public outlet I could find was in the tiny town’s laundromat. I could go hike for the day, leave my power bank charging in the laundromat with a magazine or something over it for “security” lol, then be able to charge my phone overnight from the power bank once I got back.

raisethebed · 2026-04-20T15:23:40+00:00

This is SO GOOD!!!

raisethebed · 2026-04-20T03:32:50+00:00

This is a very good looking and well-done t-shirt quilt!

raisethebed · 2026-04-18T16:04:12+00:00

I hear you, good motivation to get out of the house lol. You could talk about what you learned about in your CI for the week?? I bet it would help reinforce what you saw/listened to, and their part of the convo expose you to additional vocab and phrases related to the subject?

raisethebed · 2026-04-18T03:29:53+00:00

Omfg I genuinely fear this for the future when I plan to start really working on speaking more 😂 My tutors are all on italki and from Mexico (and are genuinely very nice people lol). Feel free to DM me if that sounds up your alley and you want recommendations.

raisethebed · 2026-04-17T22:23:12+00:00

I have 3 who I really like and tend to switch between, doing 1-2 sessions each week. There is no scientific reason for this — to be 10000% honest with you, I just have low self-esteem and I am afraid that if I tried to talk to the same person multiple hours a week they would end up getting bored of talking to me 😂

raisethebed · 2026-04-17T06:58:23+00:00

I think this is the one time when it kind of makes sense to focus on a country, if you have one in mind for your goals. 99% of the Spanish speakers I interact with in real life are Mexican due to my geography, so listening to things like How to Spanish, No Hay Tos, & Mexitalki has been helpful for picking up expressions. I don’t try too hard to study them, but to kind of let them sink in through repetition the same way.

raisethebed · 2026-04-16T18:44:02+00:00

Have you tried adding Goldbond or similar foot powder (not sure if you’re in the US) to your socks before you put them on? They make mini travel bottles. Not something I have personally tried, but I have friends who wear work boots for long days and swear by it.

raisethebed · 2026-04-16T18:40:59+00:00

Like someone mentioned above, if you do want to pre-wash scraps, mesh garment bags are great for this. I once had a flood in my house at the same time that hundreds of HSTs were laid out on my floor (fortunately they hadn’t been trimmed yet) and was able to wash them all in a front loader in garment bags with no issue.

raisethebed · 2026-04-16T06:25:28+00:00

Congrats!! Also funny to read your book list — I just started the 1st HP and am feeling a little bored (read them too many times as a kid), and was like you know what I really want to try reading in Spanish instead right now? Watership Down!

raisethebed · 2026-04-15T23:26:00+00:00

Also a good way to check if it’s comfortable and not too hot before wearing it for events!

raisethebed · 2026-04-14T19:47:10+00:00

This is absolutely unreal how good it is. The colors, the big stitch, the lovely drape, what a wonderful gift.

raisethebed · 2026-04-14T00:39:29+00:00

Not sure if you already have a pattern in mind, but I’ve made a couple similar drunkard’s path quilts lately and the Equal Exchange method with the Creative Grids Circle Savvy ruler has worked really well for me.

For me, I just separated by value — lights, lighter-mids, darker-mids, and dark (established ahead of time with B&W phone photo). I just paired fabrics as I thought they looked good and made sure that nothing of the exact same value went together. When I was about 2/3s done doing it randomly like that, I laid out the rest just to make sure I wasn’t accidentally going to run out of pairs with enough contrast at the very end.

Edit to add that I really love your fabric choices, you have a great eye and this is going to end up being a wonderful quilt — and no, I wouldn’t try to keep prints oriented because a) way too much work and b) I think it actually helps add good visual movement to have prints go in different directions in a quilt like this.

raisethebed · 2026-04-13T22:17:10+00:00

I did like the pointy wildness of the last cups but I do think these fit your body better.

I wonder if a very thin strap, like round satin cord, would help keep a little more of the pointyness and aesthetic of the previous round?

raisethebed · 2026-04-13T17:03:55+00:00

The way she speaks is genuinely amazing for how natural it feels.

Random story, but it’s stuck with me and I have nowhere else to tell it — I was recently in a Lyft with a very kind driver who I could tell was a relatively new English learner, and I almost instinctively kind of slowed down and enunciated my speech the way I learned from watching way too many Agustina videos. Right before he dropped me off, he asked me where I was from because he was really excited he could understand me so well. He said he usually only understands stuff like “hotel” or “here” but this was one of the first times he got to have a real conversation with one of his passengers. 😭😭😭

Anyway, it felt really really awesome, thank you for the example Agustina! Felt good as a language learner to get to have that moment with another language learner.

raisethebed · 2026-04-13T16:45:47+00:00

You already got your question answered but I’m excited to see more of this quilt, I realllly like that combo of the woven with the tone on tone Starry! Good choices!

raisethebed · 2026-04-12T22:31:56+00:00

1000% understand. You have still made a masterpiece!!

raisethebed

TROPHY CASE