Well, I didn’t learn to speak Spanish online, but knowing how to speak Spanish did help to save my life, reallyMore about that later though.

Before we get started, you need some background. Through some very unfortunate circumstances, I woke up to find that I was a single father with 4 very needy teenagers. All teenagers need love and affection, but without a mother present, the need was only magnified.

So, I got the clever idea of trying to find a suitable partner south of the border, for myself and for my children. Right or wrong, my thinking was that a Latina would be much more inclined to accept me, my family and dire circumstances than I had experienced with local women.

I got this impression from living in Spain years before, plus I was rather fluent in Spanish. When I weighed it all together, it made sense to me.

Unless you have been in similar shoes, it is impossible to comprehend the incessant demands of doctor/dentist/school/sports/friends on a daily basis. I also was working as much overtime as possible to pay for everything, usually 50 hours a week.

I began this adventure by trying to learn to speak Spanish online, and soon I had made friends with a woman in Mexico. You don’t need to learn to speak Spanish online to meet a Latina, but that is actually a good way.

Within a few months I decided to take a trip and visit the Mexican woman I had come to know. She was very enthusiastic and eager to have me come for a visit. The story of my visit is the subject of another story, a good story at that. After I met my new Latina friend I knew in 5 seconds that this would never work, but the problem was that I was scheduled to be there for 10 days!

Realistically, my only option was to make the best of it and learn all I could about speaking Spanish, Mexican culture, how the interior social life really was, and so on. This may have been quite complicated and all, but it really was better than trying to learn Spanish online!

After a few days we took a jaunt to one of the many huge state parks in the middle of nowhere. The plan was to find a hidden waterfall she had heard about, deep in the woods. This was a welcome distraction, so after eating with the locals for breakfast, we were on our way.

I insisted that we eat with the locals, so we found the open air market where there were lots of mangy dogs and lots of flies . I wanted to be like the locals, so I ate what they ate-big mistake. Within an hour I was in total weakness with terrible diarrhea and a fever.

After drinking some fruity concoction that was supposed to cure me, we left for the waterfall. The drink actually did help, but I was so weak still. This made me walk much slower than normal, and I soon found myself wondering why there were mansions out in the middle of this park.

Very quietly, she told me that they were narco-trafficker mansions. I asked her if this bothered her, but she rolled her eyes and told me it was us stupid Americans who had the drug habit. The way she and most everyone else viewed it, they were just farmers and businessmen supplying the Americans with what they wanted.

I was taking pictures of a mansion, when suddenly I realized I was all alone and there was a pick-up truck coming up the tiny trail toward me. Strange, this trail was so small I wondered how a truck could even manage.

To my great dismay, the truck had 6 passengers, 3 in front and 3 in back. These men were Mestizos, half Spanish and half Indian. These people are very dark and have deep black eyes, and I was scared. Scared to death. These guys were probably warm and gentle souls who read bedtime stories to their kids, but I was mortified.

The truck stopped, they got out and all 6 of them walked over to me! This is the end, they will kill me, cut me into little pieces and feed me to the wild animals. Not a soul will ever know either!

There was only one thing to do: speak with them. I took a slow, deep breath, played as casual as I could and started chatting with them in Spanish.

It worked! We chatted a bit, they relaxed their machetes and nodded for me to keep moving on. They chopped the brush on the roadside for 30 seconds and I very smoothly and very quickly moved on down the road, minding my own business!

This story shows you a very good reason to to learn to speak Spanish online! Learning Spanish online is the fastest way to become conversant, aside from immersing yourself in the country and culture. You don’t have to get in a situation like I did to appreciate your Spanish language skills, but you will certainly be able to make your own memories and friends.

Since living in Spain and traveling in South America, Randy Hough has continued to learn Spanish and test program after program to find the best. You can read his reviews and comments on his site: http://CompareSpanishLanguageCourses.com

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