Language School

Immersion or submersion?

There was, at times, a feeling of drowning.  Not knowing, not having any idea of what the ?.. was going on.

I’ve throw myself into a lot of things without thinking through the consequences in life, and this was certainly one of them.  

Imagine Big Brother in Revenga.  Revenga? you may well ask, is a tiny pueblo, let’s get into the vernacular here, north west of Madrid.  Set in the Guadarrama National Park, an area steeped in civil war history.  Accommodation was a local ‘casa’.  Square and squat in a square and shaded garden, overlooked by cows and an old woman betrothed to the Old Man of Coniston.

La Mujer Muerta Mountain

Hola launched the morning as out ‘teachers’ breezed into our still sleep ridden brains.  And so began the days.   Breakfast started and English left our lips, if not our brains, for much of the day.  Classes and one to one conversations.  Verbal and mental gymnastics for minds used to a language with more exceptions than rules.   Trying desperately to tune in to tenses which removed pronouns and defined to a minute when an action took place.  Naturally there is no ‘it’, though some things, such as the sea, take on gender fluidity.

Mid day is merely the time to pause and take a break.  Comida, the big meal of the day, in the garden, on the permanent table, at 2pm.  This was far from Tapas.  Whole leg of lamb taken to the village bakers for roasting.  Many houses in villages don’t have their own ovens.  Soups thickened with eggs, potatoes or bread.  Thick warming stews filled with chickpeas and char.  Fried chicken and salad of pimentos and lumpy tomatoes.  The likes of which would never grace our supermarket shelves.  Vegetables and meat rarely met on a plate.  Vitamins generally preceded protein.  Of course there was wine.  Just enough, no more, to encourage that feeling that it really was a sensible idea to slip quietly  into a Spanish siesta.

Segovia

When mind and body believed that the day would wind down.  Spain takes on a different direction.  At 4pm there was the second phase.   Practical settings.  To Segovia sightseeing.  Its vast aqueduct constructed without mortar by Romans.  The giant monastery of Real Sitio de San Lorenzo de el Escorial.  Tickets and conversation in Spanish.  Initially stumbling, with more silence than conjugations, slowly we cruised in to a more confident, if not fluent phase.

Real Sitio de San Lorenzo de el Escorial.

On a couple of days we were, we thought, ‘off the hook’ from class.  Only to discover that the day was totally conducted in Spanish.  Shopping with our individual lists.  Each to buy and order from the market. A system where ‘la ultima’ is at perfect liberty to disappear from the line if large.  An area still devoid of mass tourism ensured we played the game and stayed in character.

Fresh market produce

Taken to the beautiful city of Valladolid the route began at the tourist centre where we asked in Spanish, were given leaflets in Spanish, and planned our day round remarkable architecture, history and art. My new found delight of Sorolla being amongst the treasures. 

Valladolid

Given time there was a bar to idle in for a while.   Plazas filled with parents watching children, girls watching boys, boys watching girls while our minds chilled in a lazy afternoon sun.  Then at 9, more food!  More hearty soups, delicious cheeses, cakes, pastry or leaking red chorizo.  With wine.  Maybe a digestif….  for the digestion – before our teachers left.  We could speak, in English, without too much thought, again.  But did we?  Generally our brains were exhausted and we simply slept until the next cheery 

Hola Chicos!

Segovia

I went to learn Spanish with Bankfield Languages