Imbolc, snow, fencing and Tenerife

It's been a snowy Imbolc here in Madrid, with two dumpings of snow during school (as if the kids need any further distractions from class.) At the moment it's sleet, sleet and more sleet and it feels like it's getting colder and colder by the week. Brrrr, roll on Spring.
Imbolc was a good deal better than last year (which hardly bears thinking about) and I went to Gredos for Imbolc for the first time in 2 and a half years. It's nicer in the summer but it was still beautiful this time of year, and we had a great ritual with faces old and new. See the Grandchildren of Gaia blog for pictures and the full post.
Jess and I have taken up fencing lessons with a Groupon voucher so we get them ridiculously cheap, and the guy talks slowly enough for us to follow it. It turns out I'm doing well, but then I've always been good at these ye olde type sports - I was good at archery as a kid and great at javelin in school so clearly I was born in the wrong century lol. With this, Zumba and all the walking we're doing at weekends on our trips we seem to be sticking to our New Year's resolution of more exercise.
Tenerife was as brilliant as expected but it feels like such a shame to fork out so much money for such a a brief trip (and a two and a half hour flight to get there.) The plan was to sit on the beach for 2 days but the weather wasn't really good enough for that (though we weren't complaining at 22/23). Instead we spent Friday afternoon wandering around the beaches on the north side of the island and went to a nice Italian for dinner. On Saturday we went up the volcano which made for breathtaking views high above the clouds for miles around. It took 2 hours to get up there on the bus and the cable car wasn't cheap but it was well worth it. Unfortunately there was only one bus a day and we were stranded there for about 3 hours afterwards, so we hit the gift shop (twice) and I bought a load of new Spanish books to amuse myself with. The place was a lot more international than I thought it would be (it didn't really feel like Spain at all, as of-course it isn't at all geographically), and it felt like there was a bit of every European country on the island. There were more Germans than you could shake a stick at (some of the signs were in just German, not Spanish or English), and for that I'd like to visit one of the smaller, less developed islands like El Hierro in future. Of-course though we had a good time and enjoyed the weather (I've even got a cooked nose to show for it), however painfully short our visit.
This week I've got a school trip to the archaeological museum in Madrid and Venice with my sweetheart for commercialised love day to look forward to!

From classroom Spanish to Practical Spanish

There's nothing like a year (or more) abroad to improve proficiency in a language and to make the leap into breaking into fluency. There are things I miss about classroom and lecture days, like being in a learning environment that's more about learning and less about class management (which is what it's largely been since October teaching English in a school), and being able to learn Spanish in a progressive and linear fashion rather than through the odd word clandestinely snatched from a conversation in a classroom (I'm not even allowed to tell them I've been learning Spanish since I was their age or to speak a word of it within earshot of them.) But I'll admit I was a lazy student in school and at Uni; I was interested in Spanish and enjoyed learning it, but if there was something I didn't understand, I just ignored it - something that needed to be learned by heart, I just didn't bother. No wonder then that progress was slow and that by last September I didn't have nearly as much to show for several years of Spanish as I should've done. Only since living here and being involved in a community of Spanish speakers who don't understand English have I begun to make a real effort, and here I want to show some tips about how to make good progress in a language while living in the country, and beyond.

1. Vocab tests. There's nothing more annoying than recognising a word and having to look it up for the umpteenth time. I've accumulated a very long list of new vocab from words overheard, words read in books and newspapers, things heard from films and videos. The ideal is to learn 10 words a day but in my vocab book there are 24 lines per page so I divide it in half for 12 words a day. I repeat these words again and again until they're memorised (10 times is a good standard), and at the end of the week have a weekly test of all the words from that week, and in this way it actually sticks. It's an even better idea to make a sentence from each word so that it can be remembered in a particular context, which also helps to revise verbs and tenses.

2. Reading books in Spanish. Kid's books are great and are generally much cheaper than these 'comprehension stories for Spanish learners' books. I began with Monsters University in a short, illustrated volume designed for children who are beginning to read independently, which meant it was simple enough to read fluently but still had plenty of words I didn't know. Now I'm working through a book about medicinal plants, something I know a fair amount about already, so I can pick up vocab about something I have a genuine interest in. Then I'll work though the Diary of Anne Frank and The Hobbit, books I've already read in English. It's a good idea to read about something you know about or have read before or you're likely to get lost and it won't be fun.

3. Videos and films. Netflix has plenty of Spanish language films (quality iffy, granted, but then a lot of Spanish language films are.) However my favourites are El Orfanato, Mar Adentro, El Labyrinto del Fauno. I'd much rather watch a Spanish film than an English one dubbed into Spanish - they just look daft and fake, and watching Spanish films you pick up on idioms and cultural differences you otherwise wouldn't. Youtube has hundreds of documentaries and films in Spanish and I particularly enjoy National Geographic series in Spanish.

4. Make Spanish friends. The particular community I've latched onto don't really speak English and in any case I'm expected to speak Spanish. The Spanish Reclaiming group leader is German and speaks perfect Spanish, but slowly and clearly enough for me to understand most of what she says. When I'm with her I feel like if she can do it, so can I. I have conflicting thoughts about immersion:

Cons: A common mistake to make about moving to a country of your target language is thinking you can just let the language wash over you and you'll just soak it up like a sponge and it'll just sink into your brain by process of osmosis. That's how small children pick up other languages so easily, right? Well, no, they're working very hard to remember these words, and are also in a stage of life where rapid learning of large chunks of information is a normal part of daily life (we oldies are a bit out of practice.) The result is being bombarded with a lot of Spanish that you just don't understand, which is incredibly daunting. I've been laughed at, I've had people roll their eyes at me for asking them to repeat whatever it was they just machine gun fired at me, and on still not understanding, I just have to smile and nod and hope it wasn't a question, or else hope the ground opens up and swallows me. Expect people to be impatient that you're difficult to communicate with, that you don't seem to have much to say, and to completely forget how exhausting it is trying to keep up with what's being said for hours on end. That's the price to pay m'fraid!

Pros: But there are advantages to immersion once you have a good enough grasp of the language.You can pick up on words you recognise but wouldn't have been able to translate from English (but beware of false friends.) You can get a firm sense of how a sentence structure should sound and you can tell instantly when it's wrong, something you can't really learn from a book. It improves listening and speaking skills better than anything else and helps to make genuine connections with others.

5. Learning songs/ poems/ short texts. This is a good way to improve speaking skills and can be done at home on your own. Learning songs helps with your accent, widens vocab and is fun at the same time. I could for example learn a poem I love or a paragraph from a book that really speaks to me, and repeat it again and again until I can recite it from memory. The advantages are work on intonation and accent, and being able to speak fluently without tying your brain (or your tongue) in knots trying to get the words out, and speaking with confidence.

6. Study buddies or exchange partners. A few weeks ago a friend of a friend sent me a frantic email saying that he was going to the UK on his own in April to collaborate in putting together a workshop and needed me to teach him English in 4 months. It's doable if he works hard and the priority for him will be on being able to understand what's being said to him and on being able to make himself understood. We meet every Friday and I teach him practical things that he'll need to know and help him with grammar, pronunciation and appropriate vocab. He had a basic understanding already of English and he's working hard and learning quickly. I don't charge him because I need Spanish speaking practice and am learning how to explain English grammar in Spanish. Also because we have plenty in common we can have genuine conversations about what we love and about what's going on in our community rather than forced, abitrary exchanges about nothing that interests us. We really want to understand each other!

I have to be at a level of near fluency by September as a requirement of my course and if I don't hop to it I'll feel like I've been wasting my time here in Madrid. Put in place incentives for yourself like Spanish speaking friends with mutual interests, reading and watching things about topics that genuinely interest you, doing things that you'll enjoy and will actually make you want to learn are the way to go. Feel free to add any more suggestions in the comments below. :)
Happy learning!

Christmas, travel nightmares ahoy and New Year

Greetings readers, super long time no write!
I´ll begin at the beginning, with my disastrous flight back to the UK just before Christmas. I was leaving late, the day before Christmas eve, because I was supposed to be doing a Yule do with Reclaiming types but it was cancelled at the last minute. I´d warned Gingy of bad weather forecast for my flight but she insisted it would be fine (lol). When I got to the airport we were delayed by about 2 hours, not told why, and when we got on the plane the pilot told us that we´d be on our way shortly, then 10 minutes later told us we´d be stuck there for at least another half hour. When we got to London we circled over Gatwick for some time before landing in what was described as ´the limits of what we can land in´ - it was so bumpy I thought I might chuck up. Nice. We were told to disembark one at a time and run to the terminal building in sideways rain and gale force winds ´cause the plane couldn´t make it to the tunnel (I thought we were still moving but turned out it was the wind rocking the plane.) I was even more annoyed when my roaming wasn´t working on my Spanish phone and couldn´t tell Gingy where I was or even if I was coming. To rub salt into the wound we then all sat by the baggage reclaim for 45 minutes before being told that no-one was getting their bags tonight (by which time it was Christmas eve). I was relieved just to be able to get the hell out of there and in tears I ran into arrivals where a tired looking Gingy mercifully had been waiting patiently. Not fun.
So we then spent Christmas eve running round 8 different pharmacies and surgeries to get an emergency prescription of the medication I stupidly hadn´t packed in my hand luggage. It was left til boxing day to phone Easyjet, who told me to phone Gatwick, who told me to phone Easyjet customer services, who told me to phone the baggage reclaim company, who told me to phone Easyjet baggage handling, who gave me an almost identical number to phone because "Yes I´ve talked to almost everyone on your flight but sorry I can´t help you." Finally I managed to talk to someone who had half an intention of helping me who told me that if they sent my bag I might not get it til after New year, and I might as well go to the airport to pick it up myself. So just hop on the Gatwick express, right?
Wrong.
There had been a landslide on the Gatwick express line so we had a merry time with various buses to get there, before finally, four days later (after a good deal of queuing at the Easyjet customer service desk and being given yet another phone number), someone appeared with my bag. Yoohoo! Fortunately during that period Ginger´s clothes had fit me reasonably well and dear gods that girl has the patience of a saint. It turned out later that the bags had been on the plane all along and they just hadn´t been offloaded ´cause the carousel was flooded. They didn´t tell us that at the time because.....?
Because reasons, obviously.
It later turned out that other Spanish flights had been diverted to other London airports, then up North, and then even to Amsterdam, and that I must've been on one of the last flights out of Europe and I was lucky to get to Gatwick at all.
Anywho Christmas day was a much more pleasant affair than usual, with a not dysfunctional family which is definitely a first. Ginger´s parents gave me more presents than I´d ever had in my life for Christmas and they stuffed me with more roast dinners, chocolate and booze than I knew what to do with. Not complaining folks. On one day between Christmas and New Year, as usual, I went to spend a day with my dad´s family, hoping to have a lift from Ipswich but my dad and stepmum were stuck in such hideous traffic I had to brave the bus to Felixstowe (which was an hour and a half late), and boy, was that an adventure and a half. I think I could´ve walked faster. Anywho it was all smiles and nods as usual but at least I had work to talk about til I was blue in the face should they press me with endless awkward questions about my life. Of-course I got plenty of questions about why I wasn´t going to visit my mum but it was almost with glee, I found, that I was answering those. Very rarely do I get on better with my dad and my mum and my grandparents are surprisingly cool about it.
I spent the second half of the holiday ill after spending the first half chasing this damned bag (lol), and I´d wanted to get Philippa down to London for her birthday and we all just sat there coughing and spluttering lol.
Leaving of-course was horrible but guess what, we´re going to Venice for Valentine´s Day! Didn´t think I´d ever look forward to Commercialised Love Day but we´re both spending a lot of money on this I guess to make up for lost time.
So, work´s getting more boring but my free time at least is getting better; at work we´ve got to drag a bunch of kids through some English Cambridge exams that no doubt half of them will fail, and one day there was a kid who halfway through a speaking mock said, with a look of utter despair, that he just didn't want to be there. Deja vu much as it wasn't so long ago I was sitting where they were wondering why everyone and their mother was being forced to do French, and here I am inflicting the same misery (although it turns out French is equally unpopular here lol.)
On our first week back we had another of those infernal orientation meetings that goes on and on for ages and consists of nothing that can't be put into an email, and in this one we were told in Spanish that we must speak English at all times. Oh the contradiction of it all. But on Fridays I´ve started meeting up with Saucco (someone I know through Spanish Reclaiming) for a Spanish-English exchange, and on Saturdays I´ve started zumba which I´ve always enjoyed (with the added perk of watching the instructor shake her booty of-course.)

Also over Christmas I finished the Price of Man, wooo! Now I´ve ordered a proof and am waiting for it to turn up. So I´ll leave you with these two slices of happiness:

Ginger's mum gave me a Battersea dogs and cats home calendar and the kitten on the January page is called....
GINGER.
Such cute.
Very fluff.
Much orange!
Wow!

and, quote of the month:

Quote of the week is from a kid in 2° ESO, who when asked to learn something by heart, replied:
"But I have fish memory! Like Dori!"
Everybody say 'ahhhh'.

:)