Well another boring post about how much studying I haven't done. I'm disappointed that Inspector Montalbano has stopped on the BBC, but I'm still watching Spin. I've got a couple of other youtube videos I watch regularly but they are normally only 10-15 minutes. I need to find some more TV series to watch in both French & Italian before the Super Challenge starts. It is a bit worrying that I'm not making any progress and I'm going to be stood in a building full of polygot soon with the "dear in the headlights" look.
My schedule doesn't change much. Trying to catch up on a huge backlog of anki cards in four languages. Watch a couple TV shows each week, and do a session with a tutor for French. I listen to French radio station in the morning on the way to work for about an hour when I can, lately the AM reception has been crap, so I couldn't hear anything and it was only today that I managed to tune in one of my normal stations.
I got a lot of French music loaded on spotify, so listen to that when I get a bit bored of everything else.
Finally I wanted to discuss my experiance with HelloTalk. To be honest it isn't great. The three languages I try to use if for all have slightly different problems. French just doesn't seem to have a lot of users available to speak, or the ones I approach aren't interested. My level of Mandarin isn't high enough to go much past hello and how are you. Italian is ok, has more users than French, and people seem more willing to engage in longer conversations. However they all seem to have the same problem I have in Mandarin. Their level of English isn't good and mostly I just talk Italian. Not that I'm complaining about this.
Then there is the problem with not having anything to talk about. I'm not much good at small talk, and it is difficult to keep a conversation going. Personally I think this HelloTalk would be more useful if there was a secondary category for interests other than languages. Trainspotters, or people who hate Apple Macs, etc. At least then I'd have something to talk about other than the weather and where do you live. This problem of course isn't just limited to HelloTalk, it happens all the time.