CuppaTea

I last wrote about my language learning experience in Spain in this post , and first wrote about my monolingual language learning experiences in April. Before I left, I thought I would share some reflections on what I achieved over this amount of time. Turned out the wifi on my last day had other ideas, so I'm posting it now!

We returned from Las Médulas for a late lunch, and thoroughly enjoyed the food prepared for us in our absence! Then a second trip was brought up. The only problem seemed to be that we couldn’t fit all 6 of us in the car. As the father of one of the students had stayed behind in the morning, we decided that one of the other three of us students would stay behind. And yet, when I drew the piece of paper to stay behind, no one seemed happy to leave it at that. I was a bit embarrassed to be the cause of so much hassle, as I was actually happy to stay home, but in the end we had three cars and fourteen people (including four children) heading out for the next trip. We headed for Aturias, a neighbouring autonomous community. An autonomous community is a little bit more independent than a state in Australia, as far as I understand it, but I’m not entirely sure of all the differences. And even though Spain is about the same size as South Australia, there are 17 autonomous communities...

I have had a few opportunities to travel while I've been here. I've written a bit about my trip to and time in Bilbao - both the food and the scenery . The other weekend I had the chance to do two trips in one day, to two different parts of Spain. First, Las Médulas in the morning. A World Heritage Site. With good reason!

I have now been in Spain for more than nine weeks, so I thought I'd share an update on my language learning experience and progress. In case you're interested, my previous post can be found here . The process of learning a language in another country where that language is used can be extremely frustrating. I am used to understanding quickly and doing very well in my studies. I like to read and can usually wade through pages relatively quickly. This is not necessarily the case in Spanish.

One of our lecturers brought in a puzzle the other week for us to work on in our breaks if we wanted. It's a truly beautiful puzzle of a wildlife sanctuary, with tigers and elephants and peacocks. And 500 pieces.

A few times over the last few weeks I have found water in my kitchen: on the bench around the sink, on the floor in front of the sink and the washing machine. (And yes, I mean washing machine and not dishwasher.) Usually these discoveries were made first thing in the morning. But I had no idea where the water came from. Occasionally I have heard a drip, again always during the night. It was usually a small puddle, which dried quickly during the morning. It was an odd occurrence, but it didn’t seem too serious. Sometimes I thought it was just the overflow from the sink when I washed dishes in the evening, only to be found in the morning.

The first thing I wanted to do when I finally arrived in Spain was buy some nice postcards to send to family back home. Touristy, but normal. What I didn´t expect was how hard it has been to find postcards. The first place I tried was a little bookstore, which sells notebooks (the primary reason I was there), published books, magazines and a few other bits and pieces. I wasn´t terribly surprised that they didn´t stock postcards, but it was worth asking.

What were my impressions of Bilbao? First, that one short, busy weekend was nowhere near enough time to see the city properly! And the city itself? It felt huge and sprawling after a few weeks in Villablino. When we left the train station to catch the metro there were lights and people and buses and cars everywhere well after 9pm. There were a lot of people on the metro. Even the fact that the city has a metro system was huge for me – I´d never been on one before. And my Australian tendency to keep left meant I got in the way sometimes!

One of the things I love about visiting other places, or spending time with people from other places, it the joy people get from sharing their foods. This may be their favourite foods, or things that remind them of home (if they are travelling or away from their home country, like I am at the moment), or typical or famous foods of a region.

Last weekend I travelled to Bilbao with three other people. We drove to León and then caught a train to Bilbao. Hours of moving through the countryside of Spain. Mainly by train. Though not only on the plain.

One of the reasons I came to Spain was to practise using Spanish, and to try to improve my vocabulary and fluency. So you may be wondering how I´ve been going, and what strategies or methods I´ve been using.

I started writing this post sometime last year, and never got around to finishing it or posting it. So now I have added a bit about who I am here. I do rather enjoy those little quizzes that go around every now and then to determine which fictional character you are most like. I would love to know how people decide on questions, and how the results are calculated - actually, I change my mind, I'm very happy not knowing how it is done! Book Week Scotland have a quiz for 'Who in fiction are you?'. "You are Mma Ramotswe from The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Mma Ramotswe relies on her intuition and understanding of people, rather than attention to the details of the law, to help her solve cases. Her rare insight into how people work is something you share. Your quest for finding meaning in life draws you towards jobs that help you make the world a better place. Although you’re generally calm and laid-back, on bad days you can become introverted, stubborn and infl...

Before I came to Spain I had never seen snow falling, or walked through snow, or experienced freezing point temperatures. I can now say I have experienced all of these things! Neither had I spent much time in mountainous country. The streets can be fairly steep here! The view from the spring where I collect water! The steepest street I have a photo of so far! It seems that the view at the end of every street in this town includes a mountain! Many are capped in snow, and otherwise the dominant colours are the greens and browns of the trees on the slopes. Plus a brilliant blue sky – we have had over a week of beautiful sunshine. I have been informed by a local that they have pretty much had snow and no sunshine since November until after I arrived! At times the snow accumulated to be several feet deep! Sounds like moving around was pretty treacherous here for a while, and I must say I am glad to not have had to experience months of snow. It was pretty but cold, an...

I have had another birthday – and this one in Spain! It is the first time in my life that I have not been in my own home country for my birthday, but not the first time I have been away from my family for my birthday. If you have been reading my blog for the last year, you may remember that I wrote about what I did for my birthday last year. And as this one was so different from any other birthday I’ve had, I thought I’d share about this one too!

I want to backtrack a bit, and talk about what I did for the first two months of the year.   I was back where I had been studying, after spending Christmas with my family and friends at home. This time I was helping to teach the Summer School, in the Language Learning subject, one of the four Summer School subjects. Summer School is the minimum requirement for people in my organisation before they leave the country to work in another context. Language Learning as a subject prepares people to learn another language in a context where there may not be a language school, or a textbook, or indeed even anything written in the language at all! The method involves the learner planning the lessons, working with a native speaker as the expert in the language. The learner requests information in or about the language, and the Language Resource Person (LRP) responds. The class was divided into two groups, one to learn Indonesian and the other to learn Romanian, and I was tutoring...

A lot has happened in the months since I last wrote in this blog, and the end result has been my arrival in Spain for March to May this year. Some of the questions I have been asked a lot in the last week in Spain, as well as in previous months, is why Spain? Why did I decide to learn Spanish to begin with? So I thought I´d share the answers here with all of you, as I´m sure some of you are wondering the same thing.