I am currently in La Alberca, a very small medieval town near
Salamanca, volunteering for a week at a program called Pueblo Ingles.
It's a program where Spanish business professionals - from chemical
engineers to corporate lawyers to stock brokers to computer engineers to
human resource managers - come to improve their English, usually
because they work for an international company where they must speak in
English to other companies, colleagues, etc.
Everyday, we speak English for 14 hours (!!!!) or more with them - we
have 5 one to one sessions with different people each day (they last an
hour)...and then breakfast, lunch, and dinner we speak with them
(usually an hour and a half at each meal)...and we have telephone
conversations with mock scenarios or conference calls with mock
scenarios... and we have group activities and meeting room presentations
for 2 hours a day... and on and on.
The Spanish people are all so nice though... and funny :) They stay
in good spirits despite the fact that speaking in English all day is
very difficult for them (especially when we are trying to explain the
idioms and phrasal verbs for the hour -- there are different ones they
must learn each hour, and well idioms are hard to explain, have you ever
tried???) I have learned so much already about Spanish culture,
politics, way of life, etc etc etc in just 2 days. Still 5 more days to
go! And all the other Anglos (as we are affectionately known) are very
nice as well. There are 50 of us altogether (Spaniards and Anglos
combined), and between us we have many, many, MANY interesting,
exciting, and crazy stories to share.
I wish I could write all about everyone here and how things are going, but I can't stay on long -- I have lots of talking to do!
