With the Spanish holiday season just around the corner in July and August, we thought it was time to do something fun, Spanish-boosting, and ‘totalmente gratis’!

Here’s the big idea…

Marina and I are opening up a video contest about just what Spanish means to you.

For me it means so much - it changed my life and helped me meet Marina, it means happy plazas, great food and rowdy fiestas, plus it’s a continuously fulfilling learning experience!

How about you? We are all learning Spanish for a reason… to find new freedom, a love of language, an upcoming trip, the chance of a new romance…

We’d like you to make a short video that shows us what Spanish means to YOU!

I’ll tell you about the cool prizes in a minute, but first, here are the easy-to-follow rules:

Step 1: Make a fun 1 to 3 minute video (strict max!) in Spanish that tells us a bit about you and your life, and just what Spanish means to you, including a fun, creative mention of notesinspanish.com

Step 2: Upload the video to youtube.com with one of these 3 title choices (the videos in Spanish, the title in English!):

“Spanish - What it means to me”, or “Learning Spanish - why I love it” or “Why I love to learn Spanish!”

Step 3: Send us the link via the contact form at www.notesinspanish.com/support with the subject line ’spanish video contest’.

Nada mas!

We’re putting a short deadline on this to get all the videos in before everyone goes on holiday, so the absolute deadline is Friday July 3rd (next week!)

OK, now for the prizes!

First Prize: A 100 dollar Amazon.com or .co.uk voucher, plus a signed copy of Ben’s book ‘Errant in Iberia’ all about how he fell in love with Spain… and Marina!

2nd Prize: A 50 dollar Amazon voucher

3rd Prize: A 30 dollar Amazon voucher

But here’s the most important thing you get:

A chance to improve your Spanish fluency! Making a video in Spanish is the best way to improve your fluency and confidence massively.

We’re going to pick 6 finalists to showcase on our blog and ask our thousands of newsletter readers to vote on the winner.

Don’t let that scare you! Be inspired to have fun, to have a go at speaking Spanish on camera. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been learning for, how basic or advanced your Spanish is, we’ll be picking the finalists based on effort, creativity and fun factor - so please, please do join in and have a go!

Make the video as soon as possible while you feel inspired (remembering the 3 step rules above!), we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Saludos from Madrid,

Ben y Marina

One of the biggest Spanish learning tips I can give anyone who is likely to be spending some time in a Spanish speaking country, is:

Talk to taxi drivers! Despite the fact that a few of them are unscrupulous and grumpy, most are incredibly friendly, and delighted to have an interesting chat with the foreigner (you and I) in the back seat.

I’ve learned so many interesting Spanish phrases from taxi drivers, and this weekend I got another, real classic.

I was chatting away to the driver about how well you can eat ‘on the cheap’ in Spain with a good old lunchtime ‘menu del dia’ (3 course set lunch).

But, he said (getting suddenly worked up), it wan’t the same in London, oh no, just about everywhere you eat lunch in London:

“¡Te fusilan! ¡Te fusilan!”

Fusilar = To shoot, execute by firing squad!

What a great way to say you get charged way too much!

He went on to describe all the ways in which you can also get fusilado, overcharged, here in Spain….

Eat ‘a la carte’ instead of a menu del dia? ¡Te fusilan!
Add an expensive bottle of wine to your meal? ¡Te fusilan!

So there we have it. Talk to taxi drivers! They have all the best words and phrases!

If you don’t think you’ll be traveling in a Spanish taxi soon, don’t worry! Just about every great Spanish expression I’ve every learned in the back of a Madrid cab is included (with full pronunciations from Marina) in our sound-super-authentic ‘Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide’: Click here to check it out and get more fluent now!

You may remember that the 120 cherry trees, donated by Notes in Spanish using a percentage of the profits from the sale of our ‘Crisis Collection’ pack earlier this year, are there to help feed the endangered brown bear population, and to compensate CO2 emissions. In fact, the trees will absorb 4.5 tonnes of CO2 and produce 2.4 tonnes of fruit per year! Thanks so much again to everyone that bought the ‘Crisis Collection‘ and made this possible.

Context: In the video Marina starts out by telling us about a corner of the Retiro park that looks just like the countryside beyond Madrid, and goes on to talk about how the Notes in Spanish trees have now been planted, the care that has been taken by FAPAS in the way they have been planted, and ends by thanking you all for your help again (also, see the helpful vocab list below):

More vocab from the video:

Las afueras de Madrid - The outskirts of Madrid
La encina - Holm oak
El cerezo - Cherry tree
La supervivencia de los árboles - The survival of the trees
El abono - Fertilizer
El ciervo - Deer
La corzo - Roe deer

Finally… Helping more charities AND your Spanish at the same time:

We will continue to support environmental and children’s charities by donating up to 5% of all Notes in Spanish profits every year to good causes.

Buy a Spanisih-boosting pack from our store now and help more than just your Spanish at the same time!

Spanish Wine Phrases Report PDF

Got the report? Great. Ryan and Gabriella asked us to put this together to accompany an event later this month called ‘Twitter Taste Live’, which basically involves people all over the world trying Spanish wines while ‘tweeting’ about it on Twitter!

No idea what that means?!

Well, Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ website that is on its way to being as massive as Facebook - the first thing to do is to sign up and follow me (Ben) on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/bencurtis

Following me now? Great! As well as Tweeting for the wine event, I’ll try and post some cool snippets and photos from Spain there regularly. Finally, you can get more info on the Twitter Taste Live event (April 24th at 6pm-8pm GMT) at Catavino.net.

¡Saludos desde un Madrid muy soleado!

Ben

P.S. More on “Al Pan pan, y al vino vino”, mentioned in our newsletter but not in the report, in this thread in our forum.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/bencurtis

Katie, who helps out with our contact and support pages, has helped me organise all your ideas into a free report that can only be called “The Most Amazing Spanish Learning Ideas Ever!”

Download the report now for free:

To download the pdf, just click on this link below (in some browsers you may have to right-click on the link and choose ’save link/taget as’)

The Most Amazing Spanish Learning Ideas Ever! - PDF

Please feel free to pass this amazing resource on to friends and other Spanish learners via Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon - anywhere you can! Friends will thank you for it!

I don’t normally post our special newletters here on the blog, but this one is important, so I’d like everyone to read it and, importantly, do what it says to really help you learn more Spanish this week! Here it is:

Hola:

Here’s THE number one, typical conversation being repeated in a thousand offices around Spain this Monday morning:

“¿Como estás?”

“De Lunes…”

‘De Lunes’ is SO used in Spain on Mondays, and it basically means ‘fed up and moody that the week is starting again’.

Well, I for one REFUSE to feel ‘de lunes’ EVER, no matter what day it is!

(One of my sisters mocks me by calling me ‘Positive Ben’ - make that ‘Ben el positivo’ for the purposes of this newsletter!)

So, Ben el Positivo’s big tip for not being ‘de lunes’ today (or any day this week) is: Do something for your Spanish!

The whole world is basically permanently ‘de lunes’ right now, but we, the Notes in Spanish brigade, are learning Spanish, thereby improving ourselves immensely and ‘tirando para alante’ (steaming forwards) in the process…

——————————————-
So here’s what I want you to do:
——————————————-

Our Spanish friend Isabel is still spending 3 hours a week in the forums at our sister site notesfromspain.com, correcting your worksheets homework, helping out with your written Spanish and questions, and generally being ’super-maja’ (really nice).

So, I’ve started a new thread in the forum called “Lo que voy a hacer esta semana para mi español” - ‘What I’m going to do this week for my Spanish.’

I want all of you to take just ONE minute to register for the forum (if you haven’t already) and tell us what you’re going to do for your Spanish this week.

Even if you are a complete beginner, try writing in Spanish (Isabel will be along to help out) and you’ll already be doing something great!

Plus, this will: share ideas, motivate all of us collectively, improve our Spanish, and make sure we are NOT ‘de Lunes’!

Please go here to join in now and share your ideas for getting ahead:

http://www.notesfromspain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7928

Here’s to the best ‘Spanish Learning Week’ ever!

Saludos desde Madrid,

‘Ben el Positivo’

P.S. 4,000 people are likely to open this email this Monday morning!

How motivating would it be if even just half of you joined in the forum thread with your ideas? PLEASE take a minute to register in the forum (if you haven’t already) and join in, let’s see if we can make this the most responded-to forum post ever!

Don’t be ‘de lunes’! Join in here:

http://www.notesfromspain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7928

P.P.S. It really is possible to make a HUGE difference to your Spanish in one week. Who else wants to make the jump up a level this week?

P.P.P.S. Everyone who writes in that thread will get a special forum Private Message from me later in the week!

Many of you will know that while Marina is on maternity leave I’ve been working on some really interesting new audio with her old friend Isabel. Well, it’s ready! I think you’ll really enjoy these recordings, you can read the full story and find out all about the new pack here:

http://www.notesinspanish.com/store/la-crisis-collection.html

P.S. There’s a big discount for those that get in early!

P.P.S. Marina may be on maternity leave, but I still pursuaded her to record a great new bonus for this pack!

Click the link to find out more:

http://www.notesinspanish.com/store/la-crisis-collection.html

In today’s video Marina talks about how she keeps her English learning fresh and motivating by filling her life with English, through watching films in English, talking to me of course but, importantly, reading lots of books in English.

Plus, she suggests that it’s good to push your limits, to tackle more difficult material than you’re used to if you really want to learn fast.

Do you agree? And as she asks in the video, ¿Cómo llenáis vuestras vidas del español? Comments below please!

P.S. Marina also talks about ‘La Crisis’ Collection coming out this week, recorded with her friend Isabel, an amazing person, as Marina points out.

Update: ‘La Crisis’ Collection is now Live here:

http://www.notesinspanish.com/store/la-crisis-collection.html

Check it out while the early discount still applies!

In today’s video I talk about 2 methods for learning more vocabulary in Spanish (and why I don’t want to cut my hair!)

First of all there is the old-as-the-hills but super-useful ‘folded bit of paper’ method. Secondly there is the best method of all: just by using new Spanish vocabulary you will learn it really fast.

I’d love you to practice right now by telling me about the ‘crisis economica’ in your country at the moment.

If you like you can just comment on your methods for learning more vocab too.

Actually, I’d love your comments on both!

Update: ‘La Crisis’ Collection is now Live here:

http://www.notesinspanish.com/store/la-crisis-collection.html

Check it out while the early discount still applies!

The video talks about how recent blog comments mentioned how hard it can be to write in Spanish. As I explain, about 5 years ago Marina used to laugh at emails I wrote in Spanish to a translation agency, even saying at the beginning “you write like a 5 year-old Spanish child!!”

However, I soon found that by just writing more, and getting Marina to help out with mistakes, I was getting much much better at writing in Spanish, and it actually became easy, and even fun!

So, we’ve enlisted Isabel, a friend of Marina’s, to come into our forum (at sister-site notesfromspain.com) once a day to join in the conversations, and help out with queries and corrections.

Here are the steps we really hope you will take now to join in, and experience a huge transformation with your Spanish:

1. Register in the forum via this link (takes 1 minute!!)

2. Say hi to Isabel in this thread

3. Join in with and hopefully start new posts in the Spanish speaking section of the forum

4. Pop in once a day to join in the conversations and see a huge improvement in your Spanish writing confidence!

(Remember to say something like ‘corrections welcome’ in your forum signature if you want help with mistakes!)

That’s all! We really hope you will join us for this, I’ll be there writing too (and getting corrected I hope!)

See you in the forum! Ben