Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
I did this for a couple of years in the early 2000's. I'm curious, do you speak Spanish? If not how did you find places like Mexico and South America for a non-Spanish speaker? I stuck to places that either spoke English or had a lot of English speakers like Norway, Australia, parts of Europe and the United States.
I only took a PC laptop with me with no extra monitors, although there were times I wish I had an extra and would have been more efficient.
|
I speak a little Spanish, enough to get by. I know enough to order food and ask for the check at restaurants. "La cuenta por favor" means "The check please". Google translate works well enough if I can't articulate myself sufficiently. I can simply type out a sentence in English and read it aloud Spanish or show them my phone screen. I did this the first time I joined a Gym in Cancun and needed a 1 month membership.
I've learned numbers by playing Poker with Spanish speaking players. I try to learn a few new words in Spanish per day. More touristy areas allow me to not depend on my Spanish so much, as the workers can speak better English than I do Spanish. I've only had a couple mishaps of misunderstanding. My favorite was when I said to the bartender "Hey cabron, la cuenta por favor". I thought "cabron" meant "buddy", but it means "dumbass".
I greatly dislike working without the additional monitors. I'm much more efficient with them.