Breaking Español

This week we recap some of our recent learning challenges including a video chat where Ben helped Lalo with some questions about his blog and Jennie who made a few new bilingual friends at a nearby park.

Over the past year, we’ve learned a ton about raising a bilingual child, including what we need to do as parents to try and keep up! This week Jennie shares her lessons and resources for raising a child bilingual and how to adjust everything from how you speak to your child to the cartoons you watch.

On this episode we talk a lot about the past few weeks of learning as well as some of the encounters we’ve had trying to speak Spanish in real life. Ben was up in Santa Barbara for some work and had a few opportunities to speak Spanish while Jennie stayed home watching Novelas and eating ice cream. Okay that last part isn’t true, but we do talk about novelas in this show as well as an upcoming law/proposition in California that would open up schools ability to run more bilingual programs.

We hear a lot from people that they’re scared to cross the border and visit Tijuana and Baja California. In this episode, we share our experiences and some research we’ve done to help understand this fear better.

Ben just got back from his trip to Mexico city so we sat down to hear how it went. Ben was there with his brother for his bachelor party (Despedida de Soltero) and visited many areas, the huge park Chapultepec, and enjoyed a ton of great food.

This week Ben interviews a former colleague and friend of his with a unique backstory. Jonathan Zaidman comes from a family that immigrated to Mexico years ago after being turned down by the United States when they were fleeing their homes in eastern Europe for fear of persecution.

We’re so excited to share with you our recent trip down to Valle de Guadalupe! If you’re not familiar, this is Baja’s burgeoning wine country that sits just east of Ensenada about 1.5hrs south of San Diego.

This week we give some updates in our learning journey including trying to get a SENTRI pass, Spanish play dates, making reservations in Spanish, and using some new apps to help build vocabulary.

This week we recount a trip we went on early in our Spanish learning journey to Nicaragua. Often for Jennie’s birthday the weather here in San Diego is pretty rainy so we end up traveling, this time to an amazing tropical destination and surf paradise.

This week Jennie and Ben went to a local Mexican restaurant in Barrio Logan, a very authentic Mexican area near downtown San Diego. At the restaurant they had a really authentic experience ordering, eating, and chatting w/ the ladies making all the food.

This week we get to hear from Jennie’s cousin, Michael Field, who went through a Spanish immersion program as a child and is planning an upcoming study abroad in South America. Michael started his journey at an early age of 5 years old when his parents enrolled him in a Spanish immersion school in Portland, Oregon.

Our last two weeks were chock full of experiences in our learning journey including our son’s 1st birthday party and our trip to Portland to visit family. At Jack’s party we had some family and close friends over to celebrate with many speaking both Spanish and English, including Jack’s nanny Patricia.

This week we catch up with each other on how the week was as well as we did our first recording speaking Spanish in the wild! We took a mic with us on a recent journey out and about the town and got a few sound bites of us talking with others in Spanish.

This week we interviewed the man that has helped us immensely in our journey and taught us practically all the Spanish we know, our Spanish teacher, or guide as he likes to call himself, Lalo Vega!

The past week proved to be full of exciting times meeting new friends in Español! Both Jennie and Ben met several people that are first language Spanish speakers and engaged in some interesting conversations. This episode introduces a new format where they talk about experiences like these along with other things they learned like new Spanish words and phrases. Enjoy!

We have a 10 month old son, Jack. He has been the light of our life since he’s joined us here on planet Earth. Naturally, since we want everyone to gain a greater compassion for others by learning a new language, we decided to raise him bilingual.

We started our journey nearly 2 years ago to learn Spanish and immerse ourselves into Latin culture. Along the way we’ve been able to fine tune our method and what works for us including taking classes, using duolingo, and challenging ourselves to engage with others in public.

We are Jennie and Ben Sullins hosts of Breaking Español the Podcast. Recording after our young son Jack goes to sleep. We started this journey because we believe having compassion for other cultures starts with speaking their language. After a few trips to Europe and Latin America, we decided it was time to commit and actually learn a second language. Living in Southern California Spanish was an obvious choice.