This past week, I spent time with some amazing Spanish people out in a remote village in Spain about three hours from Madrid. It was a week that started much like the week I spent in Poland, volunteering for the Angloville immersion program. But, my week in Spain with the Vaughan Group (the organization who runs these programs in Spain) went a little differently.
Not only were my fellow English volunteers closer in age to me this time around (versus being mostly younger backpackers), but they were also all professionals or retirees. Add to this, that we got our own spacious hotel rooms (versus sharing with another tutor) and that we were in Spain, where the people are passionate, open, love to talk, and drink wine with every meal, and I felt completely at home!
Sidenote: I have been told multiple times since arriving in Spain ‘you look like you could be Spanish’ or…. ‘you will fit in very well here in Spain’ by um… Spanish people, so I believe it’s true.
Apparently, my tendency to wave my hands around in the air while I talk, use emphatic statements often and well… emphatically and to love to stay up all night drinking wine, socializing, and sharing personal information makes me very Spanish.
I’ve decided to take these comments as high compliments. I think I’ll do just fine here 🙂
Back to this past week, and my experience at the immersion program…
How did the week go?
We all (English native speaker volunteers and Spanish participants) departed from Madrid early Saturday morning and embarked on the 3 hour journey by bus to a tiny little town called Barco de Avila (about 1.5 hours past a city called Avila). The town was, as expected, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The idea is to be immersed in a bubble of English language speaking with English language speakers in a place where, even if you wanted to, there is nowhere to escape to, from (insert diabolical laugh here).
Our week included:
- Lots and lots and lots of intense one on one talking. 6-7 hours a day with an Anglo (English speaker) and a Spaniard; these sessions sometimes included telephone calls with scripts during which time each person would go to their rooms and call the other for a real phone conversation (versus pretend phone calls where you are in the same room).
- Lots of organized ‘entertainment’ : such as plays with participants (quite hilarious) and one man comedy shows with the program director as the one man (Sometimes funny-and sometimes just funny how bad the jokes were). We would all partake together in the evenings. These entertainment sessions were about 2-3 hours each day usually in the evenings before and after dinner.
- Lots of fun meal time conversations about just about everything in the world: current Spanish politics (they have an election coming up very shortly)food (our favorite foods from our own countries and from Spain…), holiday traditions (trading American/British/Canadian and Spanish traditions with each other), wine, travel, past relationships (yeah nothing is off the table when you spend this much time with people!). Of course, these conversations are often had with wine
- Awesome professional connections. These were some smart people, with really cool life stories and an interesting array of professional experience (international business development, financial planning, air traffic control, advertising…. there was even someone in law enforcement). We all learned a lot from each other.
- Lots of late nights: Enough Said
- Much needed Siestas occurred each day from 3:30 to 5pm. Many of the Spaniards slept. I don’t know how to sleep in the middle of the day and wake up not grumpy so I walked to town, worked on emails, or chatted with family/friends via Skype.
- Singing and Dancing. There was ample opportunity provided for us to sing songs, learn new songs, choose songs to be played for party mixes, dance on the dance floor and shake it like we just didn’t care (or like a Polaroid picture… depending on your preference)
The week was a good mix of a ton of hard work, with some play and almost all of the ‘work’ being enjoyable even if exhausting. Sure, the Spaniards were sweating and making a lot of effort to suddenly speak in 100% English 100% of the time and to go against their natural instincts to speak their own native language (which was not allowed). BUT, we all wanted to communicate. We all wanted to share stories, exchange cultural traditions, and keep the conversation going.
THIS IS THE KEY to why immersion language programs like this work. I can’t wait to be part of an immersion Spanish program!
Conclusion:
I had a lot of fun playing the role of tutor during this program. The role combined many of my favorite things: talking, meeting new people, learning about different cultures, and being out in a beautiful remote place.
Added benefits for me? I always end up with new friends after these programs. In this case, I ended up with a fabulous group of new Spanish female friends who are helping to show me around Madrid and make me feel welcome, and some British and American (plus one Egyptian) friends who I’ll get to see back in Spain and in future immersion programs.
I hope to be able to do more of these programs in the future. There are various companies that have programs in different countries and that work in slightly different ways and I plan to try them all!