Writing a Blog in Spanish 🦜

As a working citizen in Austria, you can be so lucky. Every 4 years, you get the opportunity to take up to 1 year off work to educate yourself. The idea is to learn new skills that could help you in your career. If your employer agrees, you can go on educational leave. All sponsored by the state!

Since regulations have been quite lax so far, many people decide to spend the time travelling, while educating themselves in a not-so-demanding way. In my case, I'm learning Spanish. I'm attending an asynchronous online course, where I have to hand in my homework once every month. By email. Oh, yeah!

So for half a year, I have been doing my Spanish homework while travelling through Oceania and Southeast Asia. Let me tell you, apart from the Philippines, whose languages were somewhat influenced by Spanish colonialism (Kumusta in Tagalog vs. ¿Cómo està? in Spanish), the language isn't all that useful in Asia. But then, we made it to the Americas and all of a sudden knowing Spanish was paramount to getting around.

Learning Spanish in Mexico

When I arrived in Mexico, I suddenly decided to take my Spanish homework more seriously. Also, simply leaving the house meant that I could practice:

• Randomly running into our Airbnb hosts led to Spanish conversation.
• Going grocery shopping led to Spanish conversation.
• Eating out in restaurants led to Spanish conversation.

All of a sudden, I felt really motivated to learn this language. But still, doing my Spanish homework felt like a chore.

Habit hacking to learn more Spanish

One day, on a stormy September evening, shortly after tropical storm (later Hurricane) Helene hit Cancún, I was in a mood. A mood, I usually find myself in, whenever I feel uninspired. I felt too uninspired to write. I felt too uninspired to build something. And yet I wanted to write! I wanted to build something! Now, what to do?

The problem? I want to learn Spanish, but I'm too lazy. The solution? Combining something I love to do with something I'm too lazy to do. The result? A blog in Spanish.

Building a Spanish blog

The magic of habit hacking is this: I don't want to do the hard work of learning Spanish. But, I want to build a new website, because building websites is fun. Plus, I love to write! Maybe also in Spanish?

So I did what I do best: I chose a new platform (as I like to experiment with technology) and created a new blog. I ended up with the most basic and down-to-earth solution of building a blog these days: Neocities. Neocities is a static web host without the fuss of building something on the modern web.

I've built this website with the basic ingredients of the web: HTML and CSS! No JavaScript. No framework. No fuss. (Shoutout to Geocities, Neocities' mental predecessor.)

Learning Spanish in South America

Right from the get-go, I wanted to challenge myself. I already knew that I was about to spend almost 2 entire months in South America. I already knew that the best way to learn a language was to spend time in a country where the language is spoken. What better way to learn Spanish than spending two months in South America? Apart from Brazil (Portuguese), Guyana (English), French Guyana (French) and Suriname (Dutch) the whole continent seems to agree on one thing: we speak Spanish!

So the challenge I formulated was the following:

As long as I'm in South America, I want to write one blog post in Spanish every day.

Let's do this!

Making mistakes

Another factor I considered was that I will make mistakes. I might even embarrass myself. More than that: I have to make mistakes, because making mistakes is the best way to learn! Therefore, my Spanish blog has a clear message regarding mistakes: I will make mistakes and whenever I do, I ask my readers to reply by email and help me become a better Spanish speaker.

Writing a Blog in Spanish

The good thing about this is that I had very low expectations concerning my writing. I'm an absolute beginner. I haven't written any Spanish before. As such, for many of my blog posts, the word "blog post" is an exaggeration. Many contain no more than 2 sentences and some much rather call them "tweets" (or "toots" for anyone living in the Fediverse).

Many times, I've turned conversations or situations that I've had into blog posts:

• My neighbour doesn't stop the music at night? ¡Para la música!
• The fire alarm goes off in our flat? ¿Fuego?
• For some reason the backseat of our Uber is wet? ¡Está mojado!
• I'm riding a horse in the Peruvian Andes, in the highest altitude I've ever been in? El punto más alto.

Writing a blog in Spanish helps me to react to certain situations. Writing a blog in Spanish helps me to develop a better understanding of the language. Writing a blog in Spanish helps me to build a Spanish mindset.

By now, I'm halfway through with my challenge of writing 50 blog posts in Spanish. If you are a native Spanish speaker, a novice or intermediate or just curious about me learning a new language, follow along my Spanish blog.

¡Vamos a escribir un blog en español! 💃