![[477 hours.png]] Ok, so last post was in August, this is November, and I've only done about 50 hours since then. I took a bit of a long break. Which is fine! Life is life. It was summer, I traveled a good amount, got engaged, you know, cosas que pasan. I finished Gran Hotel, which had been my main active immersion series, and figured it'd be a good time to get refreshed and start back up again. Since last check-in have accomplished the following: #### Watching/Listening/Video Immersion At a high level, my strategy is as follows - One series I'm actively immersing with and sentence mining from - One series (or several) I'm free flow immersing with ##### Main Drivers - **Gran Hotel S3** - Finally finished the series! I found on most episodes I could understand nearly everything (maybe around 95%) with the subtitles on, save for occasional unfamiliar words or phrases. I loved this show, although it has massive plot holes and dragged toward the end. Still a good time, and I've never been one to care much about plot holes if the characters are good. And boy are the characters fun to watch here. It basically has all the elements that make me love a show - great complex characters, wealthy ppl behaving badly, period piece, beautiful costumes, murder mysteries, grand romance. Definitely recommend if you're the type to like telenovelas. - **La casa de las flores** - Currently rewatching. I've watched this twice, once with English subs, before I was learning Spanish, and once intensively with Spanish subs, sentence mining and looking up everything. This is my third rewatch and I'm doing it without subs to test how well I comprehend. Am I catching every word? Am I understanding and following along? I am understanding and following along, but am absolutely not catching every word. Paulina with her slow exaggerated accent is super easy to understand. Julian and Elena, with their slang and speed (which I imagine is normal), can be difficult to understand. I def have a lot of work to do when watching without subs. ##### Others - **Mundo Zamba** - Continuing to watch every now and then. It's a good show, but generally more adult series pique my interest. - **Demon Slayer (dubbed)** - Watched half of this so my fiancé and I could dress up as demon slayer characters for Halloween. #### Reading At a high level, my strategy is as follows - Reading webcomics and graphic novels so that I have two channels of input (the text and visuals) to make comprehension easier and more enjoyable.. Once I feel good about this I plan to move on to novels (just one channel of input) - **Webtoon** - Reading several translated webcomics in the Webtoon app. I don't always track when I read this because I find that sometimes I have negative emotions around the behavior of tracking hours and would prefer to just enjoy. Most are trashy delightful romance I feel a bit uncomfortable recommending here ☺️. However there's one webtoon I find hilarious and would recommend - [Las aventuras de Dios](https://www.webtoons.com/es/comedy/adventures-of-god/list?title_no=1729) - **Gael series** - This is a learner comic rated at A2, written in Spain Spanish. It has a good amount of colloquial language and cursing, and the illustrations are lovely. Personally I really enjoy the *thief executing a heist with his group of ragtag pals* premise of the series, and would recommend this to all learners. Overall this was pretty easy for me to read, even the colloquial terms I was familiar with. - Gael y la red de mentiras - Gael y las sombras de huida - Gael y el arte de la traición - **Memorias de Idhún (Graphic Novels)** - This is actually a series of young adult novels written by Laura Gallego, but I'm reading the graphic novel versions for the reasons I mentioned above. I just started this recently and am finding it easy to comprehend so far, will update more as I get further into the seriesl - Overall I feel like I probably could tackle some easy novels, but we'll see. #### Active/Pure Listening/Podcast Immersion - Spanish Language Coach Intermediate - I continue to enjoy this podcast and listen regularly. Cesar speaks so clearly, I enjoy his guest interviews, love the subject matter, and the podcast length is perfect! Definitely the main driver of my listening practice. #### Anki - I've been pretty shit at keeping up with my Anki with any type of regularity. oh well. #### Up Next - I'm like 99% sure my comprehension is way past good enough to start outputting, but I'm procrastinating on figuring out output and happy with my current process so I'm just going to work on better comprehension. - Series I'm most interested in watching next for active immersion: - Club de Cuervos (looking to immerse more with Mexican slang and accent) - Los Espookys - El Ministerio del Tiempo - For free flow immersion continue to watch whatever I feel like - Mundo Zamba, vloggers, rewatches of stuff I've watched before - Continue reading Memorias de Idhún graphic novels - Start getting into short stories and maybe novels after I finish those --- Created: November 3, 2022 Last Modified: November 3, 2022