The best way to learn a language, obviously, is to immerse yourself, hence the trip to Mexico City (2 days!). But as I have learned during the past several years, there are tons of online resources available for people who want to brush up on or improve their language skills, but who lack the ability to take off for a couple of months. Some of my favorites include:

Spanishpod went from totally free to mostly free to mostly subscription, but the product is worth the money, with consistently engaging lessons for all levels and fairly entertaining tangential audio and video offerings.

Notes From Spain has on my iPod/iPhone since early 2005, when it was mostly the audio ramblings of a British expat living in Madrid and learning about the new form of online life-sharing: podcasting. I distinctly remember how much I loved the first soundscape, giving me another glimpse of life out on the streets of Spain. Bringing in his Madrileña wife and offering Spanish-language podcasts at various levels has turned the hobby into a full-fledged business and a great resource for Spanish learners and hispanophiles.

Voices en español is a great blog and podcast run by an American former(?) journalist living in Madrid. A gringa, she offers advanced-level content through the lens of a non-native speaker.

BBC Mundo's daily 15-minute podcast presents the news of Latin America through the BBC's perspective.

El País, one of Spain's top newspapers, offers the news of the day along with video and audio add-ons. It's obvously a great resource for keeping up with Spanish events, but it's also really interesting to read about U.S. news from a different point of view.

El Universal is a new one for me, but I figured I should make Mexico's flagship newspaper a regular part of my media consumption. Once again, there are great multimedia offerings and a fantastic list of podcasts.

RTVE stands for Radio y Televisión Española and it kicks major ass. The site has really beefed up its content in recent years and now boasts a fantastic library of streaming television programming and downloadable radio broadcasts from all of its different channels. A highlight is Cuéntame cómo pasó, which I watched beginning to end this season. Following a Madrileña family during the years before and after Franco's death (and Spain's transition to democracy), the show is a well-produced and fascinating mix of soap opera and history lesson.

Similarly, Radio y Televisión de Andalucía has hooked me with "Andaluces por el mundo." The show hits me on multiple levels, offering a general world travel program combined with the Spain factor and a challenging, rapid-fire Andaluz Spanish to try to follow.

Continuing with my mild obsession with all things Spain, Multimadrid and Madridman mostly feed my desire for English-language information about traveling to and living in the country. But they also have Spanish-language forums and grammar tools that would be useful to any learner of the language of Cervantes.

Jesús ripped into me a little bit last night for not responding to him in Spanish when he was talking to me en español (I do believe the word coño was used once or twice). Sigh. I continue to sabotage myself because of my flat-out refusal to allow myself to make mistakes in front of people I'm close to.

I think he's worried I'll shy away from opportunities to charlar while in Mexico, but I don't hesitate when dealing with other people, especially in other settings. The one potential pitfall will be when talking to Jorge, the guy who runs the guesthouse where I'll be staying. His English is excellent and I can imagine myself taking the path of least resistance. However, I have kept all of our back-and-forth emails regarding the trip Spanish-only (as I've done w/ the language school). Additionally, I think spending every weekday morning in Spanish-conversation classes will quickly elevate my confidence and comfort -- and just get my brain to begin operating in Spanish each day, so hopefully I'll default into Spanish w/ any bilingual folks I encounter without thinking about it.

Ojalá.

A lot of my Christmas gifts were tied to my upcoming trip to Mexico City. Among the least costly but most useful has been a book of Spanish slang, expressions and grammar rules, tied specifically to Mexico.

I'm trying to attack the book one section at a time. Some of it is review but probably an equal portion contains idioms and customs with which I'm entirely unfamiliar. For example: No son enchiladas literally means "they aren't enchiladas," but it really means that something is not as simple as suspected. Like, I'll take care of it, but it's not like making enchiladas, so it might take a while.

One other thing I've known for a long time, but which I was reminded of, is the se me phenomenon. The verb "to forget" in Spanish is reflexive: olvidarse. If I forget to bring my book to class, I don't say olvidé mi libro. Instead, I say se me olvidó el libro. The subject of the verb is the book (it's the same if you drop or spill something -- caerse). I'm really saying that the book forgot itself of me, or the book was forgotten by me. It's still understood that I'm the dick who forgot the book, but it's not so harsh. The accidental aspect of the situation is emphasized. Blame-shifting FTW!

My favorite photos of the year, from New Year's Eve in Brooklyn to the Digg holiday soiree in San Francisco:

NH
Originally uploaded by tjdee

The reunion could have been a disaster. My ridiculous decision to shave despite having forgotten shaving creme could have screwed me big time. If I had been the only guy to go the semi-casual route, I would've felt like a tool. Frenemies could have shown up with attitude, holding grudges. And while my friendship with Alli, the organizer, gave me access to the attendee list, anyone could have shown up at the last minute while I was manning the registration table.

But everything was pretty great. The open bar helped keep conversation loose, I think. Some last-minute attendees were welcome surprises. Sitting at the welcome table was more fun than awkward. Reconnecting with people I hadn't seen since high school and those I had lost touch with after a couple of years was equally cool.

Mad props to Alli for tracking down everyone and for some creative touches at the event: Attaching 10-year-old photos to balloons was genius. Playing Romy and Michelle at the welcome table was equally clever. And planning the next morning's brunch at the hotel was perfect.

Thankfully not everything was as perfect. There was just enough drama to keep things interesting - some vomiting at the afterparty, a single slightly scandalous hookup and some damage to the suite - but not enough to overshadow the focus of the event.

I still can't quite wrap my head around the idea that more than 10 years have passed since graduation. On my last night in NYC, Alli, Lauren and I stayed up 'til 3 a.m., in part because we popped in a DVD a classmate had passed along that surprisingly contained about an hour's worth of footage from our last day of high school. This guy, Paul, had taped everything, from the pledge of allegiance to my A.P. English class to lunch (where he asked people what they wanted to be doing in 10 years) to the crazy bomb scare we had that day (one of several fakies phoned in by a weirdo that nearly caused the cancellation of our ceremony) to senior choir members practicing our graduation song. It was pretty boring stuff, objectively, but utterly fascinating to us.

Now back to Facebook, with which I'm addicted all over again thanks to the reunion.

How do we learn? Sometimes, for me, acquiring a new Spanish word -- like, for realsies, not just for a fleeting moment -- requires the creation of a mnemonic device and other times it requires an embarrassing situation.

I just hadn't been able to keep the word(s) for "straw" in my brain until about a month ago, when I met Jesús at a taquería in downtown Oakland. I had finally remembered bombilla, but that's really just for drinking mate (so really only of use in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay). J reminded me that a common word in Mexico is popote (also used: pajita). That struck me as sounding pretty indigenous, sort of like the tongue-twister (and lip-bumper, I guess) street name we came across during our vacation in Mexico City: Popocatépetl (took me probably 5 tries to get it right). So I made myself a little sentence incorporating as many puh sounds as possible: Vamos a la calle Popocatépetl para comprar popotes para Penélope.

Speaking of streets, that's a simple word -- calle -- but I used to have a hard time remembering whether it was feminine or masculine (English is a harder language to learn than Spanish, but damn it, at least we don't have gender attached to nouns). I finally connected la to calle after listening to the Julieta Venegas song "Eres para mí." The lyric that made this click in my head is "la calle que canta su canto de diario," which also is full of alliteration.

As I mentioned earlier, embarrassment works, too. Almost exactly a year ago, within a half-hour of checking into my hostal in Madrid, I knocked a glass ashtray off a table in my room, causing it to shatter on the tile floor. Lots of glass everywhere. I had to tip-toe into the private area to ask the señora de la casa if she had a broom I could use to clean up the cenicero. I had to use my nerdy electronic dictionary to look up that word, but I haven't had to look it up since then. Watching a little old Spanish granny clean up your mess (hey, I offered but they shooed me away) will make a word stick.

It's hard not to focus too much on the impending 9-week trip to el D.F., but it helps that the next month and a half will be full of travel, work schedule-shifting and moving-related tasks. First up is a trip to NYC/NJ for Thanksgiving at my aunt's new place and my freaking high school reunion. A week from tomorrow, I will be back at the hotel that hosted my senior prom, living out a movie scene by greeting people at the registration table (only for 20 minutes or so, but still). Thank God for the open bar. I plan to be completely wasted an hour into this thing. A delight!