You can't learn Spanish. You need to live it. -

The easiest way to learn Spanish is to move to a Spanish speaking country.

But most people think I can’t just move! I have a job and a house! My family lives here! My friends live here!

Okay so you can’t move to a foreign country. Fine, I get that. Neither can I! But you really want to learn Spanish in the fastest way possible, right?

Time to start thinking outside of the box. What if you moved the Spanish speaking country to you? Does that sound a little crazy? It still kind of does for me too. But what if it were possible? Wouldn’t that be the next best thing?

Let’s just run with this idea for a bit. How could you possibly move a Spanish speaking country to you? In order to figure that out, let’s start by imagining what life would be like if you did live in another country.

I think an example would help us out here, so I’ll use myself. What if I lived in Mexico? Hmm, let’s think of what my daily routine would be. I’m going to include the hours as well so I can see how I use my time.

(7:00AM - 7:30AM) Wake up, drink some coffee while watching the morning news or reading the news, both of which are in Spanish.
(7:30AM - 9:00AM) Get ready for work and traveling to work. I’m listening to podcasts or music in the background.
(9:00AM - 6:00PM) Working now. Probably concentrating a lot and still thinking in English since I’m not fluent in Spanish yet. I have small conversations with coworkers in Spanish.
(6:00PM - 7:00PM) Leave work, run any errands, and travel home. Listening to music/podcast in Spanish as I commute.
(7:00PM - 11:00PM) At home now. Cook and eat dinner. Time for some relaxation so watching some TV in Spanish, reading a book, or playing some videogames.

So that’s what my typical day would be if I lived in Mexico. So let’s see what’s replicable without having to move there and what is not.

Routines 1, 2, 4, 5 seem reproducible. I just need to find:

News (tv and written) in Spanish
Podcasts or music in Spanish
TV and movies in Spanish
Books in Spanish
Videogames in Spanish

Number 3 doesn’t seem doable. But I’m really not using that much Spanish since I’m working. The Spanish conversations I have with coworkers are definitely valuable, but if I summed up all those conversations, it’d probably be at most an hour or two of time.

Now that we've mapped it out, let’s summarize the amount of time I think is reproducible. Summing up the hours spent doing routines 1, 2, 4, 5 would be 0.5 + 1.5 + 1 + 4 = 7 hours each day that I can reproduce at home with the right resources.

How many hours can I not reproduce? Those 1-2 hours of small conversations at work. That's it.

So all in all, I can stay where I am and still get 7 of the 9 hours of Spanish immersion that I would typically get while living in a Spanish speaking country???

We are definitely onto something here!

We just need to make ourselves a little Spanish bubble and we can recreate what it would be like to live abroad in full Spanish immersion. We are going to be bubble boy but our bubble will be Spanish.

Okay enough dreaming - it's time to get our hands dirty.

We need to start gathering all of the ingredients before we can create our little world. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. It's going to take a bit of work to get our bubble in tip top shape. Luckily for us, we already created our ingredients list above! They are:

News (tv and written) in Spanish
Podcasts and Music in Spanish
TV and Movies in Spanish
Books in Spanish
Videogames in Spanish

Finding these resources in Mexico is easy, but finding these where you currently live? That's a doozy.

Luckily I already did the digging for you, so you don’t have to sweat like I did!

Here are some in-depth guides for finding each one of those resources:

Now start gathering your ingredients for your own Spanish bubble. Don’t worry, I’ll be waiting for you here. Now get to gathering!

Okay you’ve done that. Good job! Now it’s time to take action and create your new Spanish bubble. Your next step is to continue onto the Spanish Bubble Action guide, which will show you how to do exactly that.