For the past 6 weeks, a lot of my time in Barcelona has been spent studying Spanish and simultaneously neglecting this blog. I attend class 5 days a week, 4 hours a day and have been supplementing with Duolingo, podcasts, reading basic Spanish books on my Kindle, watching TV in Spanish and attending language exchanges I find on Meetup. After 6 weeks, my vocabulary has improved and I can read and write a little better and say basic sentences but once someone talks to me too fast I'm lost. It's been fun though and I'm really enjoying it. For my first break (for Easter weekend we had Friday and Monday off) I went to Malta. My friend Sarah from the US, who currently lives in Amsterdam, and I had planned a long weekend trip to Malta a couple of months before I had left the US. To be honest, like many other North Americans, I hadn't heard of Malta before. Malta is a fascinating island. It is actually a group of islands, the primary one being Malta itself. They speak two official languages, Maltese and English. Many signs are in English. And in case you were wondering, yes this is where the Maltese dog is believed to have originated from. Other Malta Facts It is about 200 miles south of Sicily They use the Euro They are an independent country, having gained independence from Britain in 1964. They drive on the left and you can still find red phone booths around the island They have some of the oldest buildings in the world There is a direct flight to Malta Continue Reading