Welcome to Wander World School. It's trivia time. What major city hosts a floating forest, an underground lake, blue mountains, and a famous structure that is truly an optical illusion? Tune into this month's listener locations to find out. 

I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today's end of the month episode includes a lesson learned for our family on our travels back to Spain, listener locations, and tips for exploring that major world city from this episode's opening trivia. We also discuss highlights and feedback from this month's episodes, and our deep dive is all things language learning. But before we jump in, how has your month been treating you? Our January kicked off with a return flight to Spain. However, while trying to use our brand new priority pass at the Gulf Den to spend the delayed time waiting for our flight, well, my oldest son leaned in to help the youngest one fix his golf ball at the exact moment that he swung and hit my oldest in the forehead. They had been doing so good at alternating, but unfortunately he needed stitches so we had to pull our stuff off the flight, head to the emergency room, and I waited on hold for hours with British Airlines. It ended up just being cheaper to book new flights the next day than to pay the change fees. They did not waive anything for the medical emergency. So alas, this is a very important lesson to you all to always book directly with the airline if you can. I don't know if that would have made a difference here but is something to consider. I am in the process of filing a claim with our credit cards, so I will promise to report back in a future episode if that was successful. Either way, we eventually made it. My son is healing just fine. They're back into their German school and we're just enjoying being back in Spain. My oldest loves that he finally has an hour of English class a week, which I asked him to be extra helpful with his peers. I also started back on Spanish classes again with Preple, and this renewed emphasis on languages for our family is why I really wanted to do this deep dive today into language learning. So if you are on a language learning journey, if this is part of your world schooling journey, send me a text with the link in the show notes with what language you're learning and how you're going about doing it. 

Are you based out of Kailua, Hawaii, Bangkok, Thailand, or Sydney, Australia? I love looking at the listener locations from this past month. Today we'll feature Sydney, the capital of New South Wales and the largest city in Australia with over five million people. And that city is the one from our opening trivia. It has a floating forest in Hombusi Bay. This is an abandoned transport ship that was overgrown. And then also an underground lake below the commuters at the St. James railway station. This was originally created when an abandoned tunnel flooded. Sydney also has blue mountains in the distance. This blue color comes from the eucalyptus trees that release a fine mist of oil. And then also they have the famous structure that is truly an optical illusion. This is the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It looks curved, but actually every piece of steel that makes up the bridge is straight. It is truly an engineering masterpiece where straight lines can create a perfect curve. Shout out to our Apple Podcast Reviewer from Podcast Genie who states, We're planning our family world school adventure and it's so comforting and building my confidence to hear other families talk about their adventures, the ups and the downs and planning resources. It was also a relief to hear guests talk about one of the world school hubs that we'll be visiting. Love it. This is exactly what we are creating here. Real families, practical resources, world schooling opportunities and more. If you're finding value in these episodes, will you give me a high five by leaving a five star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your shows? The link is in the show notes. 

For the monthly episode recaps, I'm highlighting why I like my conversation with my guests so much and why you should go back and listen to the whole episode if you haven't yet. Follow on Instagram and YouTube for reels and shorts from the episode that highlight the most important and most fun clips from our conversations. Back in episode 33, Maxwell Lee shared their family story that brought them to Taipei, Taiwan. And he also shared some of his music clips, which was super fun to be able to include in that. They talked about their expansion into the franchise fitness space. Taipei was also in the news recently because Alex Hanold, he's that fearless free climber. He successfully climbed Taipei 101, which is the tallest building. I do not know if you tuned in, but I just could not watch this live. I did watch the highlights and it's very impressive. But head back to episode 33. If a trip to Taipei is on your travel plans. In 34, Christina and Brett from Sourdough Lifestyle join me from Italy to share how their family, along with their sourdough starter Gandalf, have taken to long-term travels. They use sourdough bread baking as a way to connect with their local culture wherever they're at. If you are a foodie, you will also love their Substack articles. And if sourdough baking is in interest of yours, check out their virtual classes. Tiago and Lauren tuned in for episode 35, all the way from Costa Rica. they were at one of their co-living retreats. And if the goal of your family is to connect with other traveling families, slow down, share with one another, these retreats sound like just the place to do that. I love how they also share their incredibly different upbringings and how they came together as a couple and started their family, blending languages and cultures and sharing those with our children is truly such a gift. In episode 36, Cassidy from Living Unconventionally recounted hurt families multiple four to six week trips a year and how they make that work. There are many advantages to keeping a home base and designing a life that allows for longer, slower travel. Our discussion over linking educational topics from different parts of the world, such as history from one part and how that links to another or how animals migrate. This is really helpful for kids and it helps them really put together the pieces from what the world is like. And I plan to continue doing this in our own travels. What episode this month resonated the most with you? me a text in the show notes with your feedback, thoughts, and questions. 

It's time for a deep dive, which as I alluded to earlier, is all things language learning for world schoolers, those moving abroad. And this is for families who already have access to more than one language in their family, as well as those who do not. And even if you're English speaking and you head to different English speaking countries, or sometimes even just somewhere else within your own country, you realize how language truly can change so much. And it's really unique to a location's history and its context. It's fascinating the more you dive into language. For some context for our family, language learning is one of the big reasons why we're spending so much time in Spain right now. we're going to continue to prioritize Spanish-speaking countries and opportunities while also continuing with the kids German, which is my husband's first language. So I'll start with giving some of the language backgrounds for Mark and myself. Mark moved to the US at age 17. He had a few years of English under his belt and also some Dutch because they lived near the Dutch border. Of course, living in Colorado for a couple of years really accelerated his English. He also worked in China, so picked up some Chinese during that time. He also studied Spanish in undergrad and lived in Peru and Mexico for a while. So his Spanish is a bit stronger than mine. For me, I took three years of German in high school. We had a family connection to Germany because my mom has studied abroad there. And when she was in college, she learned the language. She lived there well before all the resources that we have now for travel. So she was very much immersed in the German culture. She kept that language up when we would visit back to Germany to the friends and family over there. I later lived in Germany for two years. And while I spoke English for work, I did take night classes for about 10 months. So I was the person that could talk to the taxi driver, order food, understand signs. I could not have in-depth conversations. However, there was a lot of English speakers in that area. So that certainly helped to navigate it. but it's also a very difficult language. I typically know what Mark is talking about in German to our kids, but speaking it is just a whole different ballgame. If we had decided to move permanently to Germany, I would have felt extra incentivized to learn more. When we went to Central and South America for five months back in 2015, we prioritize a homestay in Spanish. I truly learned so much during that four hours a day of private classes. I would go back to that experience near Lake Atatlan in a heartbeat if I could. We really, really loved our time in Guatemala. We later did some classes in Buenos Aires. And that's where I learned how different Argentinian Spanish can be to other Spanish speaking countries. I took some classes when I was back in Denver, but it just didn't stick. For our kids, it was a no-brainer that we would do the one parent, one language once our first was born. He got a lot of German exposure being the first kid, especially since we were all home together a lot during the pandemic. That was right before he turned three. So a very pivotal communication point for him. And he was getting a lot of German at home. I noticed that our second son had less exposure since he heard more English early on. Also, his brother has always spoke to him in English, so that is certainly some input in English that he gets even more than, of course, his oldest when he was the same age as. For about a year, we had a Swiss au pair. He might have spoke some German to the kids, but really, they've only been getting it through Mark and German shows like Send'em mit dem Maus and an after school German school in Denver, which we happen to be located close to. as we approached the year that we wanted to be living abroad, we knew that we wanted to continue with German, but also through our backgrounds of Spanish and knowing just how useful that language is in so many countries, we decided that early exposure to Spanish would be so important. That is why we ended up scouring the interwebs for German schools in Spanish speaking countries. We landed on Spain because it's an awesome country, but also we knew that we would be able to do a full school year abroad because of their EU passports. We just did not know if in Mexico or some of those other countries, we would be able to get a full year visa and we didn't want that to interrupt our year abroad. Valencia school was full, Sevilla accepted us and probably Madrid would have as well. But having been to Sevilla before and knowing that it's a good sized city, but also a bit more manageable than Madrid that there's not another language like a Valenciano. or Basque in the north that we would have to contend with. This is one of the reasons that we landed on Sevilla and we picked it. Little did I know that they have actually a very strong accent and they talk super fast. Andorlús is the local dialect and accent and it can be difficult to understand, especially in some rural parts. So it's not been the easiest, but that's just how it goes sometimes. Our kids started school with almost no Spanish and all the other kids are Spanish and Spanish speaking. Though some speak other languages at home, such as German or even some other families have Italian. Some parents speak amazing English and other languages, but many are monolingual Spanish. The first few weeks were a bit rough. I'm not going to lie. We kept up with preple classes for my oldest. We did some out school classes in Spanish and we switched all shows to Spanish. Poco a poco, they picked it up and seem to be able to keep up with their peers in Spanish now. Again, it's been just over two years, though we've had some time in English-speaking countries in between. My oldest seems more confident and my youngest greatly prefers English. I would like to read Spanish books together as they do German books with Mark, but they definitely prefer English with me. While our language learning journey is really just beginning, I have to say that it has been amazing to see their growth and development. And if there's one thing I am most proud of through this whole journey, it's knowing that we're setting them up for the ability to communicate and understand what others are saying in all different countries, all different languages for the rest of their life. If you're a family that speaks English only so far, you might be wondering, rightfully so, why bother? We know that English is expanding all around the world. It is a primary language for business. And we've probably seen for ourselves just how many people in other countries, especially in the travel and tourism sector, speak English. But I'm going to give you four reasons why families should still consider pursuing other languages. First is Cognitive gymnastics. Multilingualism increases the executive function. It trains the brain to switch between tasks, ignore distractions, and solve problems more creatively. It is literally helping to build their brain. The empathy factor is reason number two. When you learn a language, you learn a worldview. It forces children to realize that their way of naming the world and communicating about the world is not the only way. It builds deep structural empathy, which is very necessary in this world, right? Accessing the soul of a place is reason number three. You can travel the world with English, but you truly can only get to know the culture and what life is like there through the language. When you speak the local language, it turns you from a tourist into a neighbor. And I've seen that this is possible even with, of course, not being fully fluent. Learning a few words is one way to just unlock some of that cultural experience. And lastly, future proofing. AI translation is getting better and better every day, but it cannot translate nuance, humor, or shared history. A human that can bridge two cultures will always be more valuable than a device that can only bridge two vocabularies. So I hope those four reasons have motivated you to consider incorporating another language into your life. now you're on board with introducing languages to your kids, but you might be saying, okay, great, Susie, that is pretty easy for you to start with German with your kids so early because you had someone in your household that spoke that heritage language. And you are right. That certainly is an advantage, but it is a common misconception that you have to be bilingual to raise bilingual kids. In fact, many successful multilinguals were raised by parents who did not speak the target language, but they worked to provide resources and the environment for it to happen. if you only speak one language, your role shifts from teacher to lead learner or a resource curator. You are going to think about how you can direct your kids learning in that language. how you can bring in lots of different resources to increase their exposure. Let's talk about five ways to do that. First step is outsourcing the native input. Since you cannot provide that native accent or that native grammar, you're gonna have to bring it in from outside. or au pairs. If childcare is already in your budget, hiring a native speaker creates that environmental necessity where the child must use that language to communicate their needs. You can look into language immersion schools or dual language programs, weekend language schools in that target language. Like I said, we do have that available in German in Denver, and we took advantage of that for summer camp and after school. So that's a great way to put your kids around peers that speak the language. And this is a very strong social motivator as well. You can also look into native speaking play groups. Maybe there expat or immigrant groups that you can join. You can just sit on the sidelines. Your child will be able to hear the natural rhythm of the language during play. This can intrigue them to start picking up some of the words. The second way is to leverage screen time strategically. If your kids are going to watch a show anyway, make it a target language only rule You can change the audio track. Most major streaming platforms like allow you to change the audio to Spanish, French, or German. There's actually quite a variety of languages available, though not Every show will have a variety of languages. Since kids often watch the same movies repeatedly, they may already know the plot and that helps the language become easier to decode. You can also look into YouTube kids in the target language. There's nursery rhymes, there's lots of different videos, and the visual cues can be very helpful in helping them start to learn some of the words. You can also incorporate audio books or bilingual story time with the library. There's language learning apps that could fall under this category too. Your third option would be to be the lead learner. You can show your kids that learning a language is a fun lifelong pursuit rather than something you have to do. You can learn together through apps like Duolingo or Babble on your speakerphone so they can hear it too. You can label the house, put sticky notes on the fridge, the door, the mirror with words in the second language. When you walk by, you can say those words together. Also, you can narrate your day. even if you only know five words, use them. You can say things like, let's go to the cocina for some agua. normalizes the presence of the second language in your home. Fourth option is audio immersion. So this is just putting lots of different background music or podcasts or audio books in that target language. There are many stories for kids podcasts in various languages. Even if they don't understand every word, they're going to be absorbing the sounds of that language. I've mentioned before that Culture Kids is one of my favorite podcasts. And even though it is in English, I highly recommend it to highlight other cultures and words. I'll give a list of language podcasts and media at the end. Music can be one way to access words in a different vocabulary. Music is sticky and it helps us memorize vocabulary through melody. So this is your permission to put Bad Bunny on around your kids in preparation for the Super Bowl, if that's your thing. Number five, travel and micro-immersions. If you're not able to yet fully immerse in a country of that target language, which is something I would highly encourage if you do have the time and the capacity to do it, but if you don't, there are other ways to travel locally. You can go on a cultural mission, so going to a grocery store or a restaurant where the target language is spoken. Give your child a small task such as ask the waiter for a napkin in such and such language. Virtual tutoring, player platforms like Italki or Preply, which Preply is my favorite and we've used over the last three or plus years. They have tutors that specialize in conversation through play for kids. A 20 to 30 minute session twice a week can truly do wonders. And our son did Preply lessons early on. We had an amazing teacher from Valencia for a while. I've been taking lessons from a teacher from Cordoba last year, and he was actually living in Germany, but he was able to get a special table reservations at his family's restaurant in Cordoba when my friend and I went for a Feria last year. And I'm just starting with two hours a week with a delightful teacher who lives in the Canary Islands now. This is again, all on Prepley. And you can find a teacher from any country of any price point. And I say that because even if the hourly amount seems low for you, You are employing someone in often a low cost of living country. So you might actually be providing them a comparable wage to their cost of living. And it just allows you to support other local businesses from all around the world and learn at a price point that works for you and your family. I have also tried italki, which has both certified teachers and community tutors, which are native speakers looking for casual practice. I just found that Preple was a more wonderful and easy to use interface. So I've stuck with them. But the quality of teachers at Italki were very high and it was easy to create a long-term learning plan. You can also look into things like verbling or lingoda. They have one-on-one and small group lessons with three to five people max. You also might find that your town or city has meetups in that target language. I had joined a few of those meetups in a Spanish language learning meetup in Denver this fall, which was a really cool opportunity. What if one or both parents already do speak more than one language? What are some various methods that then you can incorporate to help your kids learn those languages? Let's start talking about the OPAL method, which is the one parent one language. This allows the kids to associate a person with the language. This is especially good to start right away and what we have been doing since birth. You can also do the minority language at home. So if both parents speak a language different than the community, is helpful to give maximum exposure to that language at home, knowing that the child will get exposure to the community language when they're outside of the home. Time and place is a approach that allows you to incorporate language into certain days or locations for a specific language. This is better for older kids who may already have a basis, understanding of that language. And they also understand time and place, which is something that toddlers don't always grasp. Another strategy is context switching, where you lean into one language or another based on your location. So when we are in the US, we prioritize Spanish and German for any media in our household. But when we're in Sevilla and in the German English, media, books, et cetera. If your family fits any of those language learning options, here are five considerations to raise multilingual kids. First is recognizing need over want. Kids are incredibly pragmatic. They are going to get what they want and they're gonna use their native language, the easiest language for them if they can. So helping to create a genuine environmental necessity for that second language is helpful. This might be through the OPAL technique or enrolling in local schools or finding a target language only play group. Also consistency, number two, consistency is greater than intensity. It's better to have 30 minutes of high quality interaction every day instead of cramming it all into four hours on a Saturday. of language as a muscle. This is going to require constant low level tension to grow. This is one reason just having podcasts on in the background can be super helpful to just get more and more exposure to the vocabulary. You can also focus on daily routines like bath time or meal time when you really focus on a target language. Number three is high quality interactive input. So sure, you can passively listen like having things on the background, but it's really helpful to have social interaction and comprehensible input. That is language that is just slightly above their current level, but understandable through context. You might want to prioritize person to person engagement over apps in this situation. Real life play, storytelling, even video calls with native speaking relatives are far more effective. Number four, cultural connection. This is the heart of the language. Language is just a code until it's attached to people and experiences that your child loves. So if a child associates a language only with work or lessons, they may reject it as they get older. But if you can connect the language to things that the kids love, such as foods or holidays, music or their favorite sport, that should help them feel like the language is more of a membership to a cool club. I know that we really like watching a lot of soccer and since a lot of those countries are Spanish speaking, I think that really does connect to the language as well. Lastly, managing the silent period or the plateau. I've experienced this as well where your kid seems to stop speaking back. immediately or they hit a plateau, maybe they start mixing languages. It's important to understand that language acquisition is a long process. There are going to be times that it speeds up and sometimes it plateaus. understanding a language will always come before speaking the language. So pretty common to mix up languages and that's actually a sign of cognitive flexibility, not confusion. So just keep at it, be consistent, it's gonna make a big difference. So I bet after all that information, I hope you're motivated to include languages, even if you're monolingual. And if you're multilingual, you have the tools to do it. But let's talk about resources. I've covered some already, but I want to give you the whole list all at once. the top resources categorized by how they fit into a busy family life. We'll start with websites and online learnings. So this is things like Italki or Preple where you can get one-on-one tutoring for as low as five to $10 an hour, depending on what country the native speaker originates from. You can also look for tutors that have PlayBase in their profiles if you want to incorporate this for your child specifically. Babble is an app you can focus more on like how grammar works. It's more rigorous than Duolingo and it focuses on practical real life dialogue. Lingoda is more of a classroom vibe. You get small group classes that are available 24 seven. You can also do different challenges. So that is helpful to get you to jumpstart your fluency. As far as Online websites and platforms for immersion, is where you learn by watching. Lingopie is the Netflix for language learners. You can use real TV shows and movies with interactive subtitles. You can click a word on the translation. It instantly turns it into a flash card. FluentU is similar to Lingopie, but it uses shorter clips and it incorporates things like news and music videos and movie trailers. This is helpful for maybe a five minute brain break. when you're working on something else and you want to just tap into your language learning for a few minutes. And Dreaming Spanish is one of my favorites. This is really focused on comprehensive input. It has videos in all different levels. It was $8 a month. The last I knew I'm ready to sign back up again now that we're back in Spain. It has tons of funny videos. You can pick from super beginner all the way to intermediate. And the cast is just really funny. The people from All different countries, including Sevilla is the Spanish one, but also Argentina and Mexico and Colombia, they are just really funny when they put together these videos. And it shows what's happening while they're using the words in Spanish. So you can pick up context and conjugation surprisingly easy. that is part of your interest. So for little kids that are ages, let's say newborn to five, You might want to focus on music, repetition, and visual audio association. There are some apps and platforms you can look into like Little Pym, which is a total immersion method with an adorable panda. There's no English spoken in the videos, just the context is made through watching the video and it's very clear. Study Cat is in Spanish and German and it uses simple games that require kids to recognize sounds and tap the screen. So it's excellent for pre-readers who can't follow text yet. And then we have YouTube and audio. Spanish for minis is a channel created by a mom. It goes over speech basics and it's kind of like Miss Rachel. And super simple Espanol or Deutsch is also songs that are slow and then the vocabulary is repetitive. the podcast, musical podcast you could say, Eat Your Spanish is, it uses Montessori inspired techniques. Perfect to have on the background while they're coloring or having a snack. For slightly older kids, you might want to incorporate YouTube channels. This might be for kids like five until 10. Smile and Learn is in English, Spanish, and French. It is an educational content. This is designed specifically for kids. They have separate channels for the languages, so you can watch a video about dinosaurs, both in Spanish and then in English to allow some that context. The slow channels, such as stories in slow whatever language that are on YouTube, they have simple animations, clear, slow narration that's perfect for kids and tired parents. For older kids, you can also look into YouTube and podcasts like Easy Spanish, Easy German. Seis minutos is a podcast that is scripted mystery adventure stories in Spanish. It's like Stranger Things for language learning. And Fabulingua, this bridges the gap beautifully with high quality digital storybooks that use magic translation. So you can hear the Spanish, but also see the English if you get stuck. Also, I want to throw in some adult resources because maybe you are on a language learning adventure as well. You can do easy languages. They have easy Spanish, easy German, all different ones. This is where they interview random people on the street and you get to hear different dialects and accents and the real slang used. Also, there's Spanish pod 101, German pod 101, all different languages. That's good for absolute beginners to advance. And I've really enjoyed the Learn Craft Spanish YouTube videos and they also have a podcast as well. and some courses every once in that have been really helpful for motivation. Also, there's the coffee break series in a lot of different languages I'll also say the Duolingo Spanish podcast is one of my favorites, even though they don't produce new episodes. The past ones are fascinating and it includes someone narrating in English, but then you get to hear real speakers in Spanish. And so it really helps if you're learning to start to put together because there is some context in English. next up we're going to talk about the best language exchange platforms and these are all free. This focuses on the I teach you, you teach me set up. I love these because it also builds friendship and community depending on if you're doing it in person especially and also because language learning can get expensive over time. If you're truly committing to this for years and years on end, it's great to incorporate these different options. So Tandem is an app that's called the Tinder of language learning, but it's for education. It's popular with a 20 to 40 inch range and you can filter by location. So I actually just joined this recently. I was able to create a profile and you can set up video calls or even text chats with different people from different languages. And you can also, if you're a woman, can select only to speak to other women. So there are some ways to build in some level of safety. The Mixer is a nonprofit site that's hosted by Dickinson College. It's also entirely free, strictly educational. It connects you with partners for Skype or Zoom sessions. Also, I encourage you to look for different intercambio or whatever language exchange is possible in the city or community where you're at. Also, like I said, on Meetup, you can find it in your English speaking country if there's a conversation exchange in your target language. I'll also add Niños and Nature. It's a Spanish teacher. She shares a ton of great resources, workbooks, and more to help learn Spanish. And her family also lives in Spain now too. She also has a podcast which incorporates some Spanish and English. It's very entertaining. My last tips will be, especially if you're learning together as a family. You might want to include learners of all different levels and you can create new family habits around language. For example, you might have a movie night and let's say every Friday, that's your movie night and you're going to pick a movie that everyone knows like Encanto or Frozen. You're going to play it in that target language only, but then keep the subtitles in English so the older kids can read, watch and then both will absorb the audio. And I encourage you to also label things around your house. Don't just label the fridge. You can label actions such as abrir to open the door or cerrar to close the door. All different things can be placed around your house. 

So today we covered so many different tips and tricks for learning different languages. Whether it's just to speak a few words to talk to the locals as you're passing through the country or you plan to live there for a long time, I encourage you to venture on to a language learning journey. And tell me your thoughts. How have you been incorporating language so far? And has this motivated you to take some lessons or do something around language? Share it with me in the send us a text link in the show notes. And as a reminder, please use the link in the show notes to support this show. There's links for Preple, but also for home exchange, credit card signups, lots of different links that if you're going to use them anyhow, if you use the link, it helps support me in the show, which I greatly appreciate it. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your month and until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.