¡Ingles Esta Prohibido!

In the early morning of the 22nd of Feburary, the A2 Spanish class left Oxford to begin their long journey to Salamanca, Spain, for a sunny, five day experience of Spanish language and culture! The students recall their trip below:

 "After sleeping much of the way, we arrived late in the afternoon in time for a typical Spanish dinner of paella and creme caramel! We were welcomed by the director of 'Colegio Delibes,' (the school we were going to be studying with) who took us to our residence where we settled into our room and nervously wondered what the next few days would bring. We were given a schedule for our stay and, forbidden from asking any questions in English, were forced to step out from within our comfort zones and ask our new teacher and activities director questions in Spanish!

We were to have 3 lessons on Thursday and Friday morning. The afternoons would be taken up with activities and the evenings with a meal (mainly tortillas (Spanish omelette), Gambas al Ajillo (shrimps) and enough jamón to fill our suitcases). As our teacher from d’Overbroeck’s  College is originally from Salamanca, she would be our guide on Saturday around the sites of the city, including the stork blessed Gothic/Romanic Cathedrals, the Spanish Civil War Archive and the Calisto y Melibea Garden. Then on Sunday we would travel back to Oxford - however I don’t think a day had ever seemed so far away!

It took us about 5 minutes on Thursday morning to realise how wonderful and enthusiastic our teachers were. Before we had left for Salamanca we had chosen lesson plans orientated around our exams and the literature we were reading, so it was easy for us to settle down and feel at home in the beautiful school situated a 15 minute walk from our residence. Every afternoon after lessons had finished we sat down in the majestic Plaza Mayor, which, illuminated by the bright sun, was overrun with little children and university students. On Saturday, in our free time, we discovered the main shopping street, and so 'had' to spend all our money on lovely summer clothes that we knew we wouldn't wear for another few months in chilly Oxford!

Our dinners were as full of laughter as they were eating and as a small group we got on really well, taking so many photos that it has taken us a week to sort through them all. Most nights we went out to a restaurant, however one night we went out for ‘churros y chocolate’, and sitting in a warm café with a cup full of thick hot chocolate and churros to match we never wanted to leave. (We enjoyed them so much that the next day we were back again for lunch, ignoring our burning tongues and an outside temperature of about 18 degrees!) On our last night we were taken out for Pinchos, also known as Tapas, where we bounced from restaurant to restaurant, trying to find space to eat amidst all the locals!

We woke up Sunday morning not really wanting to go home. After our initial hesitation at speaking only in Spanish, we had begun to speak it even between ourselves, enjoying the feel and sound of it. After hurriedly buying a baguette for the journey, we were taken to the bus station in the early afternoon, going through all our photos trying to recapture the memories we had of the trip. Sunday had come too fast, and even though all we wanted to do was stay in Salamanca with the sun, food, culture and people, we knew we had achieved so much and would hopefully continue to speak Spanish when we got home! As our plane lifted off and flew northwards towards the UK, we knew that we couldn’t have asked for anything more from the trip, or have been any luckier with our teachers, activities, and the wonderful city we had come to know.

Noemi Breiner, Cerys Llewellyn and Anastasia Bolshakova