This is really cool! Love the concept and the BYOB as well. Will have to stop by and check this out.

Let me know if you're interested in meeting up to practice. I try to read a few chapters of a book each week. Just recently finished Trevor Noah's autobiography. I'm quite slow at reading because of needing to look up new words or vocabulary, depending on the content.

It's amazing how well it works! It's difficult sometimes to note the progress but eventually you'll see it and then it clicks.

Great, thank you!

I've been studying consistently for about 5 years and I found that Stephen Krashen's theory on Comprehensible Input is spot on. In a nutshell, his theory suggests that language acquisition through regular input (watching videos and reading) is more important than trying to speak early on. I would recommend watching 15 minutes a day of Dreaming Spanish YouTube videos over Duolingo. They have videos sorted by level and you'll want to start with the level where you understand at least 80% of what's being said. If you can't understand 80%, you go down a level until you comprehend mostly everything (hence comprehensible input). Over time, you'll naturally be able to advance in level and your brain will be able to put together and understand more complex phrases from language acquisition.

You may find trying to converse this early in your Spanish journey may leave you frustrated and may frustrate the listener depending on how patient they are. If I could go back in time, I would've done nothing but consume input for 2 years and then start speaking. Because I decided to force myself to speak early on, I created some bad habits because I was directly translating in my mind from English. I had to unlearn these habits when I was more advanced which was frustrating, and I wouldn't have had that issue if I focused on acquiring the language vs learning it.

Awesome, thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks for the recommendation! Looks like the group welcomes all languages, so fingers crossed I encounter people who speak Spanish. Will sign up and check it out.

Thanks, I'll look into signing up for their newsletters. Was hoping someone knew of a solid blog with reviews or something along those lines. Realized I spend too much time on IG/FB/Twitter and would like a way to just go to the source if you will.

I meant specifically IG and FB. How do we discover new restaurants without them? I find most of my discoveries are from those 2 sites.

We love movies and go about twice a month to this location. We've also encountered issues. During Avatar 2 the employees were huddled in the room right outside of the seating area and were laughing and talking loudly through the most of the movie. I was sitting up high in the seats and could see the right side of the room constantly look over wondering what all the noise is. It was so bizarre given Alamo makes a point in the previews to not talk or text during the movie. They literally have 2 previews that tell everyone to quiet their conversations and phones, and then come back with a "Seriously we'll throw you out after 1 warning". I eventually went down to the room and politely asked the employees to be aware of their volume and that it's interrupting the movie. They thankfully kept their volume down but it's crazy that a customer has to do that.

Also have seen and experienced lots of issues with food/drink orders. I typically order just a glass of wine or two and the first glass sometimes comes out 30 minutes into the movie while everyone else around me is receiving their complicated food orders (even though I ordered before them) - huh? During one night, the party next to us got upset because they never received some food items but they were billed for them on their check at the end of the movie. When the party was explaining to the server that they never received a few items and for sure wouldn't pay for them, the server just seemed sort of incredulous and wasn't apologetic.

Alamo has an excellent track record and is known for their movie theater experience and great service, but I do think there needs to be a retraining of staff at the DC location. I sent some feedback and suggestions to management and haven't heard back.