Success Stories? Have you found a penpal or intercambio here?

[Ben]

Hi,

We would love to know if anyone has found a penpal or intercambio through this section of the forum. If so, please do let us know how it turned out here!
- Ben

[alanmalarkey]

I haven't tried it but may in the future.

mylanguageexchange.com was a good bet and for a modest £3 I bought a month's membership and was able to canvass about 20 people that I thought would be in my interest/age band. I particularly wanted voip/skype contact so was able to ignore the pen pals and text chats. Interestingly far fewer from central and south america offer skype by comparison with spain. I have ended up with 2 suitable partners, one from san sebastian and one from a small colonial city in mexico, where it is a local violation to have street lights or street advertising so as not to pollute the night sky!!

Based on your recent interview Valencia could be a happy hunting ground for inter-cambios and pen pals

Alan

[Nic]

Through this forum I met a man from Segovia and we set up a sort of intercambio. We exchanged e-mail address and chat using MSN. One day we will talk entirely in Spanish (for my benefit) and then the next we will talk completely in English (for his benefit). Although we aren't holding a conversation face to face, it really has helped my Spanish and hopefully his English. In the future we hope to start having voice conversations over the Internet so both of us can improve even more. So I guess I'm saying thanks for introducing me to intercambios! :D

[landlady]

Like Alan, (in fact I think I encouraged him to try mylanguageexchange) I paid my €5 and have approached about 5 Spanish ladies for a skype chat & email English/Spanish. One replied to say she was interested and I responded in Spanish via email, but haven't heard from her since ? Didn't think my Spanish was THAT bad http://www.post-ecard.it/img/shame.gif
Anyway, will probably try again as I have a Month's membership. I haven't tried on this site yet as I don't know how many Spanish people visit it?? I have tried looking for Spanish community sites with forums, so that I could perhaps read the posts and join in their discussions, but couldn't find anything - any ideas Marina on where to find such a thing?

[Marina]

Hi Landlady, I guess the best thing would be to find a subject that you are interested on and then find a forum on that subject in Spanish.

Let's say you are interested on cooking and recipes. Then here you have a couple of foros about food in Spanish:

http://www.recetas.net/forum/default.asp
http://www.facilisimo.com/foro/platodeldia/

[landlady]

Thank you Marina, that is a excellent idea. I don't do the cooking in our house - now that we have both retired from work, my husband has taken over both the family cooking and food shopping
http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/36/36_1_75.gifbut its about time I learned the Spanish words for different foods, cooking appliances, and cooking methods so I will look at the posts there and may join in too. I would like to know how to cook the perfect Spanish tortilla so will ask for advice and some Spanish lady may take pity on me -

[Flexichick]

Thank you Marina, that is a excellent idea. I don't do the cooking in our house - now that we have both retired from work, my husband has taken over both the family cooking and food shopping
http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/36/36_1_75.gifbut its about time I learned the Spanish words for different foods, cooking appliances, and cooking methods so I will look at the posts there and may join in too. I would like to know how to cook the perfect Spanish tortilla so will ask for advice and some Spanish lady may take pity on me -


Ok, Landlady, you have me jealous. Young, retired, living in Spain and with a man who cooks and shops for you. Brava, indeed! :cheers:

[Tony]

[ will probably try again as I have a Month's membership. I haven't tried on this site yet as I don't know how many Spanish people visit it??

Please let me know how you get on as I have recently "hit a wall" and now need to speak spanish regularly to improve...

gracias;)

[landlady]

Well, on my second attempt at finding a Spanish lady around my age to correspond and chat to in SKYPE I have found someone http://users.pandora.be/eforum/emoticons4u/happy/1074.gif Her name is Marta and she lives in Madrid (I particularly wanted a Spanish native friend as American Spanish uses the usted form much more than here, as well as other common use language differences) We have exchanged a few emails, both in Spanish & English and will be having our first chat this Friday evening http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons6/42.gifWish us luck.

An idea I had was...... how about English speaking members here at an advanced level helping out those of us who are not there yet? It could help both parties as we; at beginners or intermediate level, could ask for clarification on things in English and by explaining it to us, it could help reinforce the advanced level persons knowledge. I would be very happy to have a skype chat with an English speaking person, (or perhaps a group session?) on a regular bases who wished to discuss the Spanish language with me. We could set specific 'chats' on, for an example, the preterit tense and practise using it in our conversations. We could call the skype sessions something like spanishpals. How about it Ben & Marina???? You could announce the skype session times on this forum and base an intermediate podcast on the topic. Just a thought.

[Tony]

Landlady...

Good luck with the skype on Friday ..... I havent tried one yet but would welcome a chance to do so ......... your idea to share our common interest in spanish is a good one and I hope it is followed up ....... please let me know if I can assist.

hasta luego :rolleyes: y buena suerte

[Marina]

Hi Landlady,

We've been thinking a lot about the intercambio section recently and we are really looking forward to making it a big part of NFS. I'll be taking some days off normal work in November to work in NFS, so we will consider your ideas then and develop that section further. Any more suggestions will be appreciated.

Good luck with the Skype intercambio Landlady!
And please let us know how it goes.

[gary]

I'll be taking some days off normal work in November to work in NFS, so we will consider your ideas then and develop that section further.

Ahh the first step to becomming a professional NFS representative!?

[Ben]

Ahh the first step to becomming a professional NFS representative!?either that or skint ;):D

[gary]

Yeah, but the prospect of running your 'Notes' empire from a beachfront cafe via laptop and a wifi connection is every webdev's dream..... maybe, just maybe.....

[Pepino]

Yeah, but the prospect of running your 'Notes' empire from a beachfront cafe via laptop and a wifi connection is every webdev's dream..... maybe, just maybe.....

If anyone needs me to carry their laptop bag or collect drinks from the bar, please remember that I'm available ;)

[celia s]

I have a Madrilenian intercambio that I met on NFS...we talk frequently on MSN and have used Skype a few times (though I have to admit that my Spanish is not good enough yet for me to feel confident!)
I would definitely be interested in having more conversations with Spanish people on NFS...

[gary]

If anyone needs me to carry their laptop bag or collect drinks from the bar, please remember that I'm available ;)

Dont push in before an old man - I saw it first....;)

[Tony]

Well done Gary.... just noticed your 500th posting !

.........Not bad for an old man Mega Forero! :o

[landlady]

Didn't like being plain forero so renamed myself ;D This will do until I think of something better.

[gary]

When you can take these pebbles from my hand grasshopper....

Whats more our community is only 5 short of the 600 mark as I speak, we are still on track for 1000 before Easter and those who can ought to visit Madrid to celebrate......

[Ben]

Yes, we are very up for an NFS/NIS Easter party in Madrid. We should probably start seeing how many are really interested soon, around December time maybe...

[Ben]

If anyone needs me to carry their laptop bag or collect drinks from the bar, please remember that I'm available ;)
You'll be first in line for the job! Dont push in before an old man - I saw it first....;)...if you can get past Gary!
Didn't like being plain forero so renamed myself ;D This will do until I think of something better.That's quite a name to live up to!!!;D

[Ben]

I have a Madrilenian intercambio that I met on NFS...we talk frequently on MSN and have used Skype a few times (though I have to admit that my Spanish is not good enough yet for me to feel confident!)
I would definitely be interested in having more conversations with Spanish people on NFS...
Thanks for the info Celia (and everyone else!), it's great to hear that it has been worth it for us to set up this section. I'll try and get some more Spaniards on board next week!

[landlady]

Just found out it will take us 3.5 hours by train to get to Madrid from Alicante - that seems doable if I can get our daughter looked after and persuade my hubby to come - working on him now. What are hotel prices like there? http://www.todojuegos.com/modules/Forums/images/smiles/gathering.gif

[Ben]

Great! Hotels are very reasonable. We can look into a finding a deal if we bring enough people into the equation. In the next few days we'll fix on a date and make an announcement and see who is up for it!