Thanks to @douggerman advising me of the existence of www.meetup.com, I have found a Spanish group that meets fairly close to me every other Wednesday. I hope to try that out this week, and I will report back how it goes!
Stu
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Ā”Hola a todos!
The respite was brief - Challenge 7 is a doozy! Some really long sentences in their that remind me of Level 1 Challenge 13 
Aran assures me at the end that Iām going to remember asegurase and nos aseguremos, necesitamos and pasemos, piensan en ā¦ and conversar sobre ā¦ in all of those contexts - and I choose to believe him and move on.
Hasta luego,
Stu
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Ā”Hola a todos!
My refresher of Level 1 Challenge 25 went very well (it was a lot of fun to practice those old familiar phrases), so more confidence restored, which will be particularly helpful ahead of my first Spanish meet up on Wednesday. On to Challenge 8 later today!
Hasta pronto,
Stu
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Donāt let it be a disappointment, Stu - it was just another important step in the learning process - you got exposure to all those revision items - some of them didnāt need more exposure (the ones you got right), some of them did (the ones you didnāt) - so itās great that you got exposure to themā¦ 
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Ā”Hola a todos!
Well, Challenge 8 is done and Iām feeling good! I found it a lot easier than 7, and the revision of the words from that lesson was extremely useful in proving Aran right (yet again) - I did remember all that complicated stuff about they wanting us to make sure we finished, and so on.
However, one question: iba a ā¦ was introduced in Level 1 Challenge 25 as āI was going to ā¦ā, and now in this Challenge, iba a ā¦ is āit was going to ā¦ā. What is going on here please?
Hasta pronto,
Stu
Hereās my take: If you want to be verbose, āI was going toā would be āyo iba aā - and āit was going toā could be āĆ©l iba aā. But Spanish seems to like to drop the subject when it can get away with it (especially with āIā and āitā), so you get āiba aā in both cases, and rely on context to know which was meant.
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Ā”Gracias Lewie!
Makes sense.
Hasta luego,
Stu
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Yup, Jeffās right on the money hereā¦
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Ā”Hola a todos!
Thank you Aran for a very straightforward Challenge 9! I really enjoyed it and it was thankfully very easy and very useful. I am not going to write much about it because I am trying to psych myself up for my first Spanish meet up this evening. Wish me luck! I will report back on how it went tomorrowā¦
Hasta luego,
Stu
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Ā”Hola a todos!
Just got back from my first Spanish meet up, which was (appropriately enough) held en el pub in Solihull, about 25 minutes from where I live. A group of about 15 of us, with more than a third of those native speakers, gathered in the public bar to chat mostly in Spanish. It felt odd to be the least experienced person there, but that was good for my ego! I had a wonderful time - everyone was very friendly, and although I did a fair bit of listening, I managed to hold a number of conversations, some of which lasted more than 10 minutes or so. All in all, the meet up went on for well over 2 hours and I was very happy with what I was able to contribute conversationally. I was really amazed regarding how much I could understand when listening. So many āSSiS wordsā cropped up in the back and forth - even ayuntamiento at one point, when someone was recounting how their Spanish holiday villa had sprung a leak, and a native speaker advised them to speak to the town hall!
I got some very kind comments on my speaking, and I told anyone who would listen that I was using SSiS to learn. Most of the non-native speakers there had or were learning in formal classes and/or had homes in Spain. I cannot wait to go to the next meeting in 2 weeks time. This has really added a whole new dimension to the learning experience, as I knew it would from my Welsh meetups. I would urge anyone who is following the Levels, and who has not yet found a group, to pull out all the stops to find one locally.
On to Challenge 10 in the morning - over a third of the way through Level 2 and loving it
Hasta luego,
Stu
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An awesome and well-deserved result! 
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Did that meetup come from that website Stu?
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Indeed it did Doug. Many, many thanks for putting me onto that site!
Stu
Ā”Muchas gracias Aran! Necesito practicar hablar mas, pero disfrutĆ© la reunion muchisimo.
One thing I did notice was that everyone asked me De donde eres? rather than De donde viene?. I was very pround to attempt to answer this question with Vivo en Studley, cerca de Redditch, ahora, pero vivĆ en Birmingham y Cambridge en el pasado. I really hope that makes sense!
Hasta luego,
Stu
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Very much so! Hat-tip to you, sirā¦
De donde eres is the way Iād learnt it previously Stu. As regards the website, maybe I should have a go Might leave it until Iāve done level 1 though
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Go for it Doug!
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Ā”Hola a todos!
I muddled through Challenge 10 today. A pattern seems to be forming - I find a lesson hard, then the next easy, then the next hard. But itās not hard as in I cannot do it, I just seem to stumble through. I am beginning to think it is more my mood than anything else. I was tired from last night (I got home later than expected and to bed even later).
I am really glad we got encontrar in this lesson, as it would have come in very useful last night. I wanted to say something like Estaba tratando de encontrar un grupo espaƱol localmente cuando bi este grupo en lĆnea (I doubt that would have come out that well last night!), but without encontrar, I was struggling. Iām just guessing with localmente by the way. I listened to a podcast the other day that said that many English words that end in -al are the same in Spanish, and that you can add -mente to get the -ly ending as well, so localmente seems to fit that bill nicely!
Anyway, on to 11 tomorrow, although I may well run through 10 again first to make myself feel better.
Hasta pronto,
Stu
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Yeah Stu - listen to 10 again. Be a rebel! 
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Well I have my way of using the SSi materials that works for me and does not 100% align with Aranās advice all the time. However, It does follow the spirit of Aranās wise words and I would always advise others to listen to what he has to say on the subject. In the end though, everyone finds the route that best suits them. All I know is that until I found SSi, I never thought that I could learn another language, that I was simply incapable of doing that, that I was a āvisual learnerā, and other things as well that Aran has shown me to be completely untrue. I will forever be grateful to him for the gift of Welsh and now (some) Spanish.
Stu
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