u/UnchartedPro

Hola!

For a little bit of background, I began DS in June 2025 and reached 350hrs around a year after beginning

My pace was faster at the start and by January when I reached 300hrs I stopped DS for a while

Currently am at 370hrs of input, all coming from DS videos. So still early level 4

My previous progress updates

50hr - Level 2

150hr - Level 3

300hr - Level 4

The Trip

I went to various parts of Spain, I don't want to sidetrack the language learning element of this post however feel free to ask any questions if you are planning a trip there soon.

I highly recommend it :)

This was my first real trip to a Spanish speaking country

Thoughts from a language learning perspective

It was so cool to be able to hear Spanish in the real world and even understand it too. This isn't something I come across living in the UK

I am super happy with how the trip went. I went in with zero expectations, partly because I didn't want to be disappointed and also because I hadn't got any meaningful input in the months leading up to the trip so was pretty rusty to say the least

If im fully honest, I would say comprehension was about as I expected but when talking to only one person, rather than being spoken to by multiple people simultaneously, I was able to cope quite well

I didnt understand everything but enough to get by in many scenarios and even sort out some things without going to Google translate!

The few conversations I was able to have felt rewarding and definitely motivates me to get more input in the future

Of course there were many cases where I wouldnt understand someone, they would have to speak slowly or more clearly for me

And in terms of speaking, I did struggle to get my point across a few times. I think it was a mix of accent and lack of vocab, especially when put on the spot 😅

Reading labels in shops or on menus was quite fun and useful though :)

Main takeways

DS has increased my comprehension so so much since I started. From knowing basically 0 Spanish to being able to understand real world Spanish is so awesome and I know it will get so much better if I put in the hours

Waiting to speak is still something I agree with and I have no desire to try that any time soon but everyone is different of course and sometimes you can't avoid it

Open video downloader vs ytdlp.onlin*

Open video downloader let me download a video but a yt dl website said I couldn't

Aren't both using yt dl?

The latter said video isn't available, I'm in the correct country so maybe their server is in a specific place that isn't allowed?

Just a little confused what the best yt dl method is since I have open video downloader installed from ages ago and it's still working lol

So I know that due to the forgetting curve you shouldn't do this BUT since I've finished my exams and still want a nice break free of anki it seems an okay option

What I'm looking for is effectively a way to push all cards along, including all cards ahead of the time period

So say you had 200 cards due on day 1. And 200 due on day 2.

If I wanted a 2 day break I'd like to push these forwards but also day 3 and 4 forward

So its not like I'm having to do more cards because of my break if that makes sense

Every day is bumped along which creates a totally free period of time

I.e day 3 would be day 1 and day 5 would be day 3

Thanks