#studyundersun

2:Talk about your first kiss.

I was almost 12, so was he. He told me that he had something to show me and took me to a hidden place in the school. He told me to close my eyes and he kissed me. It was awkward, silly and messy. I didn't feel a thing.

4:Talk about the thing you regret most so far.

I am of those people who believe that their mistakes are important and make us who we are. So, I regret nothing.

8:Talk about the thing you are most proud of.

Well, I have convinced the love of my life to be with me and love me back. So, yeah,, that's a thing I am very proud of!

31:Talk about what you think death is like.

“Dying is an art.

Like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I have a call.” 

― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

Okie dokes, so usually the summer is the best opportunity to read books and watch movies in your target language without worrying too much about what you need to read/watch, so I'd definitely recommend that, no matter what. Even watching movies with subtitles in your native language helps train your ears to listen to Spanish - the trick is to kind of keep subtitles in your peripheral vision. From my perspective it's not only really fun, but waaay more effective than poring over a grammar textbook for two hours - but then again that's just me.

I also like to read newspapers and news sites in Spanish over the holidays, just because it's an interesting to see how reporting varies in different countries. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ was useful to me when I was studying A-levels because on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news you can usually find the same articles in English. Nowadays I use http://elpais.com/ a lot more, because it goes into more detail.

On the internet, there are tons and tons of self-study resources you can utilise to keep your grammar and vocabulary up. I recommend http://www.studyspanish.com/ for grammar and http://www.memrise.com/home/ for vocabulary. On memrise, if you're browse Spanish vocab lists you can search 'intermediate' or 'advanced' at the top and that should come up with more level-appropriate vocab.

Additionally, there's tons of excellent blogs about Spanish on tumblr - spanishskulduggery and spanishboone are definitely worth checking out, as two of the best Spanish blogs on this site.

I'd say it's also important to write a little in Spanish every day. This could be mini film reviews or simply a diary, and I'd say that's a good way to maintain your writing skills.

On notetaking in Spanish, I'm afraid you're asking the wrong person. I maintain handwritten vocab lists and sometimes write up topic-specific vocab lists, but other than that, my notetaking skills are the worst.

Hey!

I haven't read it, unfortunately, but I looked it up on Goodreads and it seemed really interesting, so it's now on my TBr list :)

So thank you for the recommendation!