School is over

Today I do not have to go to Spanish lessons. Maybe I am going to feel a bit lost without that habitual journey to the centre of the city at 1.30pm. Now that July has passed and school is over, I think it is about  time that I write about the fun times we had learning Spanish over the past month. In the pre-beginner class there were 9 students. Ludis from the USA - who but is now is on team Latvia, as he has converted to being a European, Liga from Latvia, Mona from Ireland, Jacek, Iga and Monika from Poland, Dan from the USA and then the two South Africans (me and Garth). Our teachers were all Spaniards who are becoming teachers so that they can work or travel the world and teach Spanish. Some of teachers were fun and showed a lot of interest in socialising with the students.

From left : Garth, Mona, Ludis, Liga, Dan and ... Me

Guiu and Pablo were two of the teachers who taught us in the first week and who socialised with us. Pablo is a funny guy. He makes mistakes. He confuses he and she. He called females "he" and males "she". I always tease him about that one! He tells me that I do not know how to speak English!!! His version of English... The teachers are all trainees and cannot speak English in the lessons so they have to explain everything in Spanish entirely. I do not agree with it as some things are better understood when they are taught in the language the learners understand but I cannot change that. There were many moments of laughter or total disbelief from us students.

From left : Iga, Monika and Garth

One thing which will go down in history is how it took about 20 minutes to get us to underline something. The teacher kept explaining in Spanish - hoping we would understand the meaning of the word "subrayar".
We were thinking that the teacher was telling us to conjugate verbs or showing us past tense or one of any other possibilities. We had no idea that it was something so simple. The teacher beat around the bush trying to get us to underline. Yes, subrayar means underline! The blank stares, the mounting frustration and confusion was all over a simple thing like "underline". We were totally gobsmacked. Even Pablo said he could have made us understand "subrayar" in less than 20 minutes. So every time thereafter, the word subrayar was mentioned in the class we sniggered at one another and chuckled as we were crystal clear about what we were being told to do. Subrayar Subrayar Subrayar!!

From left : Back - Me, Garth, Mona, Liga, Dan       Front : Ludis (Juan) and Pablo

We always had to have a name tag in front of us in the class so that the teachers could identify us by name. One day Ludis wrote his name as "Juan". And from that day on some of the teachers kept calling him Juan. It was laughs by the dozen. I still call him Juan from time to time!