Moving to Galicia meant moving into Spanish, whether we were ready for it or not. Bureaucracy, the bakery, the neighbors, the vet. None of it waits for you to feel confident. So from early on, we built a routine around it, and a few months in, it feels like a good moment to share honestly where we actually stand.
Our Routine
We keep it simple and consistent: about an hour a day split between Duolingo and Busuu, plus one live lesson every week over italki with a real tutor. No dramatic immersion bootcamp, no six-hour study weekends. Just steady, daily reps, the kind that are easy to keep up with even on a busy week.
What’s Actually Improving
Listening comprehension has come along faster than we expected. Conversations in shops, at the market, half-following what neighbors are saying to each other, it all lands more easily than it used to. Galician-accented Spanish has its own rhythm, and after enough repeated exposure, our ears seem to have adjusted to it without us really noticing it happening.
What’s Still Hard
Speaking is the honest weak spot. We understand more than we can say back, which is a common gap for app-based learners, but living it day to day makes it obvious in a way a study chart never would. The words are often there somewhere, just not fast enough, and there’s still a pause before a sentence comes out, especially outside the predictable italki lesson format.
Why the Combination Seems to Work
Duolingo and Busuu are doing the quiet, unglamorous job of keeping vocabulary and grammar topped up daily, the kind of steady exposure that’s easy to underrate because it doesn’t feel like a breakthrough in the moment. The weekly italki lesson is where that material actually gets tested out loud, with a live person who can correct us in real time and push conversation somewhere the apps can’t.
It’s the mismatch between the two, daily low-effort input against weekly high-effort output, that seems to be the useful part. The apps build the raw material. The live lessons force us to actually use it.
What We’d Tell Someone Just Starting Out
If listening is coming faster than speaking for you too, that seems to be the normal order of things rather than a sign anything’s going wrong. The apps get comprehension moving quietly in the background. Speaking confidence seems to need actual conversation, with someone who can push back, correct you, and let a sentence hang unfinished while you find the next word. An hour a day plus one weekly conversation isn’t a heroic routine, but months in, it’s clearly moving us somewhere.
