It wasn’t as difficult as i expected it to be, having lived in Germany, Holland, Gibraltar and USA where i found it impossible to get to know ‘local’ people and hence spent all my time with the expat work crowd. When i got here i needed to SPEAK spanish, conversation being the hardest part of learning a language. So i put an intercambio ad in the free classified section of a free newspaper. I got one response from a woman that is learning English and had even less of a chance to practice English that i would have had to practice my Spanish - we started getting together to practice one hour of English in exchange for one hour of Spanish on the weekends and 2 years later we’re still doing it. Somewhere along the way she introduced to us to more of her friends from her English class and we all became friends and we are now a circle of 6 really good friends, we go away on weekends, email each other every day for a laugh, go to the theatre and all the other normal things a group of women friends do… Mostly all in Spanish though do i’ve done very well out it…

I highly recommend this approach, at least you will get some Spanish conversation out of it and you will learn some stuff that you’ll never find in book! And you might make some really good friends!