Any time you are planning to travel to a foreign country it is a good idea to learn about the geography of the region.  If you are studying Spanish and plan to travel to a Spanish speaking region, your conversations with the locals will go much more smoothly if you know how to say the names of the neighboring countries in Spanish.  If you show up in a Spanish speaking country without even knowing which countries share its borders, you may end up feeling silly very quickly when you try to chat with a local.  Here is a list of Spanish speaking countries and their capitals to get you started learning your geography.

América del Norte/Norteamérica
Estados Unidos Washington
México México D. F. (Distrito Federal)
América Central/Centroamérica
Costa Rica San José
El Salvador San Salvador
Guatemala Guatemala
Honduras Tegucigalpa
Nicaragua Managua
Panamá Panamá
América del Sur/Suramérica
Argentina Buenos Aires
Bolivia La Paz; Sucre
Colombia Bogotá
Chile Santiago
Ecuador Quito
Paraguay Asunción
Perú Lima
Uruguay Montevideo
Venezuela Caracas
El Caribe
Cuba La Habana
Puerto Rico San Juan
República Dominicana Santo Domingo
Europa
España Madrid

Whichever country you visit, it is very likely that someone is going to ask you where you are from.  There are two forms of pronouns that are used in Spanish, depending on the perceived formality of the situation.  Usted is the formal way of addressing someone, and is used with people who are older than you or that you meet in a formal situation such as a business meeting.  Tu is the informal pronoun form that people of the same age and rank use.  Depending on the situation, your newest Spanish speaking acquaintance will ask you one of these two questions:

¿De dónde es Usted? (formal)

¿De dónde eres? (informal)

You can usually reply to the question in whatever form they used to address you, unless the person you are speaking with is obviously much older than you.  It never hurts to use the usted form just to be safe.  Often the person you are speaking with will ask you to use tu if they feel that usted is overly formal.  To tell your new friend where you are from you can say:

Soy de los Estados Unidos. I am from the United States.

Naturally, to continue the conversation you can ask where they are from.  They will probably mention a specific region of the city or country that you are visiting, and you will be glad if you have studied a little bit about the area so you don’t have to give them a blank stare.  Of course you won’t know about every neighborhood in the city or every little town in the country, but an general familiarity of the region will enable you to have much more interesting conversations with the locals.

To get extra practice with your Spanish before you go on your trip, try reading and studying Spanish books about the places you will be visiting.  It will increase your familiarity with the region even more if you learn some of the Spanish vocabulary for the areas of interest.  For even more insider information, see if you can get in touch with someone in your city who has visited the country before.  It would be greatly helpful to find a person who is native to your travel destination and get together with them for coffee to talk about the area.  You can learn a lot about the local dialects, traditions and geography from someone who grew up in that country.

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