Seville

Hola! We have been slow to blog recently as we've just finished spending 5 weeks in Spain taking intensive Spanish classes. This was a must-do for us from the start of our discussion about the trip. While it's been great to be exposed to many languages in addition to cultures, and Christine has enjoyed practicing and using her French, we felt Spanish would be the most useful for the children to learn. The older ones have had some exposure in school, but a few 30 minute lessons a week just doesn't get anyone very far. It's been one of our few disappointments with the school they usually attend.

In addition to setting our sights on Spain, we (or at least Christine) were also calculatingly deciding where to be in January, one of the coldest months in Europe. In the end, we chose Seville for it's temperate climate, airport access for when Dave travels for work and glowing reviews from fellow travelers. Some people certainly questioned why we would want to learn Spanish there. There are certainly no shortage of Spanish schools, however, the Andalusian region is known for it's distinctive manner of speaking including a lisp and words that get cut off at the ends or smooshed together. We went for it anyway.

After emailing a dozen schools and reviewing their responses, we chose one who was both thoughtful and enthusiastic in their response and was willing to customize something appropriate for the kids. They found young, energetic teachers who were college students themselves with a great grasp of English as well as Spanish. We hired one to teach Sam and Andrew (grades 5 and 7) and one to teach Adam and Thomas (grades K and 2). Sometimes they did things together, but this allowed them to teach at different levels and address the kids' attention spans differently.

While tempted to enjoy some alone time, Christine decided that this was also a unique opportunity for her and signed up for group Spanish lessons that coincided with the time of the boys lessons. These were all intensive lessons meaning they lasted for four hours a day with a thirty minute break in the middle - just enough time for a quick bite to eat and a stop at a nearby playground. Christine had taken one year of Spanish classes at a community college while working about twenty years ago. She's practiced it here and there in San Diego and with Dave's Chilean family but felt it was time to advance to the next level. She had not formally learned any of the various past tenses in Spanish, so it was about time!

We crammed in as many days of learning as we could. We flew in from Morocco at 8pm on Sunday night and showed up for
class the next morning at 9:30am. At the end of the five weeks, we finished off with our classes at 2pm on Friday and set off in our rental van for Lisbon. The five weeks of lessons were busy, fun, tiring, enjoyable, illuminating, challenging and productive. By the end, Thomas and Adam had put in lots of effort and learned the alphabet, counting, colors, body parts, clothing, common phrases and how to play various games. Sam and Andrew also learned vocabulary, basic verb conjugation, estar vs ser verbs, simple conversations and a Spanish Pokemon computer game. There was a field trip every week to a local sight with a favorite being feeding the pigeons in Plaza de Espana. Christine indeed learned all the past tenses (even one used largely in Spain, not Latin America) and got tons of practice chatting with her teacher and classmates in Spanish. She had fabulous conversations ranging in topic from Spanish history to coronavirus to popular music to children to politics to family life to vaccinations to sight seeing and cultural differences. It was fascinating and educational as everyone practiced recounting stories in the past tense. By the end of the course not only could Christine speak in past tense and had stopped accidentally saying words in French but she was dreaming in Spanish and felt much more confident in her language skills. She even learned how to speak with the correct AndaluTHian lisp.

During this time Dave traveled for work to conferences in Stockholm, Dubai and Manchester. When he was in town we squeezed in trips to Cordoba, Grenada, and Gibraltar and a handful of the local sights. Despite the length of time in Seville, we didn't get to see a ton of the local tourist sites and indeed, this wasn't our reason for being here. Furthermore, we've found the pattern of spending a week sightseeing and then about three weeks living a more "regular" life to be the reasonable life balance. It's exhausting to be a tourist all the time and certainly burns the entire family out - especially their Mom-turned-travel-agent!

All in all, we had a marvelous time in Seville and were sad to leave. But we are proud of our accomplishments in Spanish study!