"The Spanish was really fun to listen to. After reading about dialectal variation in my Spanish phonology class, it was cool to actually hear Caribbean Spanish in real life contexts. If I were to walk by a few lower or middle class speakers just having an everyday conversation, it was a little difficult to pick up things, but when I communicated with them, it was very doable. Even Andrés, the Colombian who speaks a similar Caribbean dialect of Spanish, as well, said he had problems with the locals sometimes. Almost all /s/ were dropped in syllable final positions ("los dos buhos" --> /loh doh buhoh/, or "es que estamos especiales" --> /e ke eh-ta-moh e-pe-sia-leh/), were either replaced with a aspiration of /h/ or just completely dropped altogher. A majority of the /r/ in syllable and even in syllable initial positions became /l/ (ayeL, mujeL, amoL, pueLto Lico, all verbs in infinitive form, etc...).
It was also interesting listening to the radio. I loved this phrase: "tú pidiendo, yo poniendo, pa' ka!" (you asking, me playing, right here!).... it just sounded so intense that I loved hearing it! I also remember one instance where it was the radio announcer's birthday and the callers were telling him Happy Birthday. One caller said "¿Cuántos años tiene?" (how old are you) and his response was "Soy treinta y ocho... ¡Que pasanme!" (I'm 38, what's happening to me!) This structure is completely a translation from English, something that I would presume a Spanish 101 student would make, but probably not a student in 102. It was so odd to hear that! It was also common to hear full paragraphs of Spanish with English words inserted every sentence of two."
