[Frauke]

I have been living in Barcelona for 14 months now and when I arrived I didn't speak more than "Hello", "Thank you" and "how are you" (in Spanisch of course ).

I took private classes twice a week together with a friend and went to an intensive 4-weeks-course in the summer. I can speak about things I know and use the grammar I know, I can understand the weahter forecast and traffic news and I can follow almost every conversation, but still, I do have a lot of problems to express myself at times. I feel I should be fluent after one year having lived here and sometimes feel ashamed that I'm not. But hey, my first language is German and I speak English all day/every day and my flatmate's French.... I get the languages all mixed up sometimes.

Basically I don't have opportunities to practice. I also feel that I'm losing my English listening to "Spanglish" every day and I'm glad to hear that this is obviously even happening to native speakers!!!

Things like "more or less" (más o menos) or "I took the sun" are running gags here. I'm glad I haven't started saying "I'm not agree", "I don't sure" or "I don't know nothing"