I started to learn English around february in 2019. I studied in an institute which is located so far to my house. So I have to spend many hours to go to there and take my lessons. For the end of the year I went to Bogota to celebrate my birthday. I found an exchange meeting throught an app called Couchsurfing close to my hotel. Then I decided to go to that meeting and try to practice my English with some native speakers. It was really awful to realize that my listening and speaking skills were very bad. I remember myself trying to talk with two guys from the US. I couldn't understand almost anything. One of them who actually works in Peru started to speak to me in Spanish. That was a fascinating night after all, I made two good friends and also I sarted to think what was wrong with my English learning process.

To be honest I had started using Tandem since 2016 when my sister told me about that app to meet people from other countries. So I had no end of conversations with many people there. Sometimes too short and with the same questions and answers, really boring chats. But in 2020 with the pandemic I was working and studying at home what forced me to find new activities to do. I hadn't forgotten my experience in Bogota so I thought I had to do something to improve my level of English. That's how I started to send many messages to people on Tandem who, I though, were interested in making audio or video calls to practice languages. At the begining, like almost always you start something new, was difficult to keep a conversations with my friends. But we are in the same position that our friends even if they have a better level of Spanish (in this case). That makes Tandem so useful and amazing.

These days I have around two calls per day every week. I met wonderful people there. Most of my friends are from the US and England, but I have friends from India and Germany too. Sometimes my friends to whom I recommend this app tell me that they can't keep a conversation with people there. So I have some tips: Only send messages to people who are learning one or two languages at the same time, read their references and profiles. Also asking them rapidly if they want to practice making audio or video calls works for me (Just if you only want to practice your listening and speaking).

I hope you can try Tandem and find good tandem friends there. Also sorry for many mistakes I could have committed, and thanks in advance if you can correct them.