I just got back from a short holiday in Madrid and it really frustrated me that I was not able to understand one single word of what the locals were saying to me. Every time I told somebody ‘no hablo espagnol’ it seemed to trigger them to speak faster and louder. And that really did not help. I adopted this goal a while back and I actually thought I mastered the basics of the Spanish language. How wrong was I. As we speak, I’m loading Michel Thomas onto my iPod, the learning starts manana!