note: this is part of #bloganuary where each day in the month of January, there is a prompt that we can write on.
It has been a long day and I am thankful for the simplicity of this prompt. Dawn and I, pre-Covid, enjoyed traveling out of the country for vacation. Typically, we found ourselves at a resort in the Caribbean Sea – Riviera Maya (where we were on a four wheeler tour), the Dominican Republic, somewhere that isn’t Cancun. We truly enjoy going to new places and trying to experience the culture. We have also come to notice that whether we are in London, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, or Texas, local residents appreciate it when visitors make an honest attempt to appreciate local food, traditions, and language. For example, on our most recent cruise, one of our stops was Puerto Rico. Once we were done seeing some of the sites with the limited time we had. We found a local bar, had drinks and talked up the bar tender. Then, while shopping, we started to ask local shop owners where the best place to eat was. While many of the cruisers were eating Subway near the port, Dawn and I posted up at an amazing diner that you could tell was very popular with local residents. I have no idea what we ate but it was unlike anything that we have ever eaten before and it was amazing. Because we spent time getting to know the culture we are looking forward to taking a vacation to Puerto Rico in the future.
During a trip to Quintana Roo, we stayed at an adults only resort. No, it is not what it sounds like. It simply means that there are no children screaming “cannonball” into the pool and contaminating my serene experience and my drink with the backsplash of their fun. Every morning as I would run the grounds, the staff was so friendly to greet me with buenos días. During one of our dinners, the waiter, jokingly but not really, would not take my order until I attempted to ask for the dish in Spanish. He was awesome and always made sure that I had my own bottle of wine at every meal.
Even for some of my every day activities, it would be helpful to have working understanding of the Spanish language. This way, next time with the server wants to be funny, I can easily surprise them by placing my menu order in Spanish, albeit with a really bad American accent. Being able to speak and understand Spanish is the language that I am going to learn.
TX2 Solutions 
Hahahah I loved reading your response to this prompt, Tommy. SO GOOD!!! I love that you and Dawn travel together (how gorgeous are you both in today’s pic on that quad bike, please?) and that you take time to appreciate the locals, their culture, their foods (yum) and their language. It is a special thing indeed that you try to speak a few phrases in their local language – it probably means a lot to them and as you say, it even means you get favourable treatment at the bar/a bottle of wine with your meal 🙂 RESULT!!! Spanish looks like a pretty fun language to learn and I hope over the next year, you’ll get comfortable with speaking it and be able to kick butt on your next holiday xx
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Dude, we have so much fun together. What you do not see in the pic is that we had to be “tested” before we went out with the guide. The best riders were at the front of the tour. One guess who was the bad ass. At one point, Dawn did go to her classic, “your going to kill me”. We went over this big rock and came down hard on the front end of the quad with Dawn holding me and doing her best to not push us both off. As she is commenting to me, loudly. I am all “babe, I have to keep up or they will move us to the back.” On this tour, they stopped us and shut off the engines and above us was a group of monkeys just hanging and moving in the trees. It was truly amazing and we had a blast.
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so so awesome. Love the story. Spanish is on my list. French was my winner
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Thank you Jixi. Dawn and I both took French. She retained what she learned and I did not. HAHA. I am hoping to be more successful with Spanish. Thanks for the comment and the read sir.
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Great post. I desire to speak French
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Thank you for reading and commenting Mary. I do appreciate. I took French in High School but remember perhaps one word. HAHA. All the best in your quest to learn French. Have a great day.
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Hello Tommy
Great to hear from you too.
I took one unit of French at campus. I remember some 10 words. This is around 12 years now. I had very little practical bit because my country Kenya uses English on most occasions
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Mary, that is 10 words more than I can remember. Thank you for sharing that where you live uses English as your primary language. That is really interesting and always fun when you get to learn something new. I did not know that.
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