After I’d finished my exams I had a whole month before the end of term, so I thought, as there’s nothing to do on campus with most people still revising, why not go to Spain? I’d got a 3-week language course from my parents for my birthday, so here I am.
I arrived on Sunday. Here's bit about what’s happened so far, partly in pictures.
Packing my hand luggage:
Airport boredom:
Figures that as soon as I've left uni, I'm reminded of my least favourite book of the year:
First impressions of Málaga:
My host family’s home (every wall and door and cupboard is a different colour, and all the walls are covered with pictures and mirrors. In short, my kind of house):
My way to/from school:
Inspiration from the shops (I really love the different buttons, but there’s no way I’d pay that kind of money for a little summer dress. Methinks a DIY project might be in order):
Gazpacho evening at the school (icy tomato soup sounds disgusting, but it was actually pretty amazing! Might try making it myself this summer):
My Spanish really is improving, and I keep discovering how much I’m actually able to understand. Expressing myself is a bit more difficult, but I’ve moved on from one word answers now. Today in class we were talking about books and I managed to explain the plots of The Perfume and The Master and Margarita (albeit with saying ‘hay un garçon’ at one point – well, I was talking about France).Yesterday we visited the Picasso museum (he was born here, as was Antonio Banderas, and we also saw his favourite bar in town). I liked the guide, hell, I even fancied him a bit, and I appreciated him trying to make it more than the average tour by asking our opinion on the works, but (and I know I sound twattish here) I wasn’t really enjoying having to listen to people who I didn’t know or care about, and who were clearly no experts, witter on in broken Spanish about what they saw in the pictures and sculptures. Not what I paid to hear. Apart from that, though, the museum was interesting and I learned a lot, even though Picasso is still not among my favourite artists.
At the language school everyone else seems to be either German or Dutch, but there should be an Estonian boy coming in the next couple of weeks. But before you think anything, he’s 13, so don't count on us hanging out much.
When one of the older Dutch guys in my class introduced the other one as his husband, I melted into the sweet and sticky little girl that apparently still exists somewhere deep inside me, and went all awww. Thankfully not out loud though.
Today we were doing an oral exercise that I already knew would be revealed as one of those pseudo psychological tests. You know the kind, it’s all like, imagine you’re on a road. What is it like? Now you see a branch/house/body of water etc. What is it like? What do you do? But I decided to use it as a creativity exercise like we used to do at uni, and let my sick imagination run wild. So I had a dead bear on the road, piano music in a forest, and a castle owned by a hot man with a dark secret. And then came the results. The most noteworthy one was that the bear I had killed had described my attitude towards love – which was fair enough. It would have been even better if I’d described it as a hallucination of a desperate mind, or why not a pervert in a bear suit.
Anyway, in short, I’m having a great time. The school is really lovely and intimate; everyone is super friendly, and there’s only four/five people per class. Oh, and did I mention it has a pool?!
Because I didn’t pay much attention to grammar when I was doing Spanish at uni this year, I’ve had to learn the four past tenses, as well as futuro, condicional, and their uses, all in one week. And I'm still alive and well.
I haven’t had any real Spanish sangria yet (can’t wait!), but we had wine and tapas at a bar, and towards the end the waiter brought us shots of caramel vodka for free. And it was delicioso.
Hasta la vista.
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