Intercambios

People are just generally interesting anyway, but meeting people in another country who speak another language is fun, educational, and a great way to start making connections…if, of course, I were going to be here longer.

In Spanish the word is “intercambio”. “Cambio” is “change” in English, so it means “interchange” or “exchange”.

Remember the old “pen pal” system? This is the updated version. You connect online and can choose to email each other, chat via Messenger-type formats, talk via Skype (I suspect currently the most common), meet for a face-to-face (generally considered the best, if you're able to manage it), or any combination of the above. The idea is that you write or speak half the time in your native language and half the time in the other person’s language, sharing both teaching and learning.

I began this round of intercambios by email with Mari Carmen, starting about a month ago. She’s in her early-30’s, works as an IT tech, and enjoys hiking with her dog. Antonio is a 66-year-old retired schoolteacher who is learning to play the guitar, and Carmina and Alfredo are a married couple in their late 40’s. She’s a high school sewing teacher who clearly enjoys working with teenagers (now that’s a gift!) and he’s a government accountant.

There are a lot of people here who want to practice their English with a native speaker, which makes for a target-rich environment for me and also, I realized, turns me into a relatively rare and sought-after commodity—an odd position to be in, let me tell you. In fact, a couple of hours after I put up a notice on a local site, I had to cancel it and turn away several other people who responded because I simply don’t have enough time to meet with everyone.

Anyway, the appointments have gotten me to different places around the city and given me the opportunity to meet some interesting people (mmm, some more interesting than others) as well as get in some practice in Castellano (that’s Spanish for what we call Spanish). Not bad, huh?