Igual

If you can't find Spanish speaking friends, then Telemundo is your best friend. I like to watch futbol and during the commercials, I'll just repeat what the announcers of the commercials are saying, sometimes over and over. I also like some of the early morning programming because it's generally fun and you can pick up a lot of new words as they demonstrate some new fad or cooking or whatever they're doing in the morning.

Without a doubt, Soda Stereo. They aren't just my favorite Latin group, they might be in my top ten of all time. They're a solid 3 piece rock band with some very catchy tunes and a great front man. Sadly Gustavo Cerati passed away a couple of months ago, but if you're interested, I'd check out their album Cancion Animal or their Ultimo Concierto live discs. I also like early Shakira (I think the album is called Pies Descalzo) and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs.

I don't get to use it a whole lot, but since they know that I speak Spanish, occasionally, I get to use it to deal with customers who need help or who have questions. I did have a job working in manufacturing once though where we had around 100 Spanish speaking people working there. My job was to help them fill out applications and work forms and then I communicated anything they needed to know and translated memos and the like.

I lived in Chile for a long time and they do speak very fast, but very clean. To me, they best approximate "classroom Spanish" of any country I've dealt with. It's just very fast. Mexican television is very easy to understand for me, but to be honest, I haven't spoken with one Mexican person that I understood very well. Something about the accent or the number of slang words they throw in that just throws me way off.

Asistencia seems like it would be something about assistance or helping, but instead is attendance. Asistir is to attend and assist is ayudar. It was confusing for a long time, but it's now the one word that I commonly mix up in English. I'll often say "how was the assistance?" when asking about attendance.