Why am I learning Spanish 🇲🇽 & Chinese 🇨🇳？ ｜ Everyday English B1 SLOW ENGLISH listening practice

Hello, hello. Maybe you didn't know, but I am currently learning Spanish. In fact, I have two goals for 2025. In December, I want to have one 60-minute conversation with a native Spanish speaker and one 60-minute conversation with a native Chinese speaker. Those are my goals. Here's why those are my goals. First, let's talk about Mandarin Chinese. I started learning Chinese in 2013. At my university, all students were required to learn two years of a language. At that time, I didn't want to choose a European language. I thought it was too common, but I still wanted to learn a useful language. So, I chose Chinese. I didn't think about how difficult it would be. I just thought about how useful it would be. Chinese was so different. It took me a long time to adjust my brain for Chinese. I needed to adjust to the tones. I needed to adjust to the characters. I needed to adjust to the word order. I needed to adjust to everything. But, I really enjoyed Chinese. It felt really good to speak even simple sentences. So, I studied Chinese in college for two and a half years. Then, in 2016, I went to Taiwan. In Taiwan, I realized my Chinese was not as good as I thought it was. I had thought, wrong. My writing? Okay. My reading? Solid. My listening? Awful. My speaking? Horrendous. But, Taiwan was amazing. Five days a week, I had three hours of class all in Chinese. After three months in Taiwan, my listening? Solid. My speaking? Decent. But then, I left Taiwan in May 2016, and I never studied Chinese again. I still remember a lot of Chinese words, but, of course, I forgot so much. But, Chinese was my first foreign language, and I want to be able to have a conversation in Chinese again. Also, many of my students are from China, so it will be helpful to improve my Chinese to talk to them. Now, Spanish. The main reason I want to learn Spanish is Spanish is useful here in America. After English, Spanish is the most spoken language in America. I think Spanish should be taught in America the way English is taught in other countries. It should be a requirement from elementary school until high school. Every American high school student should graduate with the ability to have simple conversations in Spanish. Anyways, I'm very passionate about this topic, as you can see. So, not only do I live in America, but I also live in South Florida. South Florida is a very multicultural, multiracial, multilingual place. It's very common for me to go shopping and hear Spanish as much as I hear English. So, those are my reasons for learning Spanish and Chinese this year. If you want to know how I'm learning these languages, let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching. Until next time, bye!