I am in charge of organizing an intercambio, converstion table group at my university. So far I have about 9 native spanish speakers (from spain, argentina, mexico, etc), and 7-9 americans. We are having our first meeting as a group next week, before breaking off into smaller groups for the rest of the semester. I am very excited about this..... but I need help! What types of things could we do, discuss at this first meeting (we will meet in a coffee house) to kind of break the ice, get to know each other and start talking?? We will spend half of the meeting in spanish, and the other half in english. Help! I need ideas ! ANY suggestions would be great!!

Hi kelar419! I think this is a GREAT idea you have. In fact, my ladyfriend, una madrileña, has been urging me to create a similar kind of intercambio here in Columbus, Ohio. Mainly, for me/us, it would be geared towards non-Spanish-speakers to help improve their Spanish but also with some Latinos (or Spaniards but there are SO few of them here) to help us with or correct Spanish.

Some common topics you could discuss in Spanish might be movies you've seen (in English or Spanish - preferably in Spanish), some places you've visited in Spain and/or Latin America, music, and.. what else... even your hopes and dreams.

I'm also interested to see what others have to say about this so that I may get some of my own ideas for this venture.

Good luck and have fun, kelar419!! Please come back to this/your thread to tell us how it went afterwards, won't you??

Saludos, MadridMan

You can pretty much talk about anything in an intercambio. Some good topics may also be: your family, your work/school, outside hobbies. Since this is the initial meeting, maybe have everyone introduce themselves and just help everyone get to know each other better.

When I was in the initial stages of getting to know my Spanish friends, we could pretty much find anything to talk about and keep ourselves entertained for hours. Even if it seems really ridiculous or insignificant in daily life normally, when you're talking to someone from another country who speaks another language, it's always going to be a learning experience.

Some conversations we had ranged from discussing Sesame Street (in Spain/Latin American countries the show has different names as do many of the characters) to how you say 'hook up' in English. (The way they asked that was "Como se dice 'cuando tiene un/a novio/a para solo una noche' en ingles". As I said, always interesting...

In other words, anything can be interesting, educational, AND entertaining when you're bringing together people from different cultures and languages!

Have fun!

-GG

Thought I would update my own post! We had our first intercambio tonight...absolutely great, the next best thing to actually being in spain ! Conversation came very easily...definitely no lack of topics to discuss. One thing seemed to lead to another and the 2 hours was up before we knew it. Topics ranged from....diferences between spain and the usa, music, tv, majors, etc....all the way to the amish culture in the united states, the rules of american football, local night life, tv shows, halloween etc... It was a great experience!