Everyone seems to be settling in very well with their host families, especially Ione and Iseult who have Spanish ‘siblings’ who are similar in age to them. Ione’s Spanish sister has been accompanying her on the metro while Ione gets used to it. Leena’s host family also have another student who is from Hungary and she gets on really well with him.
They try to speak Spanish but luckily, he knows some English too. After our classes in AIP, we walked to the CSS Language Academy where we had a class with a special focus on oral work, just for the Irish students. Our teacher’s name in CSS is Marta.
Afterwards, we headed back to AIP for 5:30pm to meet with the other students, who are also part of the summer camp there, for our evening activity. We had all received travel cards to get around so we used these to board the tranvía (something similar to the Luas) with our tour guide José and headed to a restaurant beside the beach. At the restaurant, the chefs had 4 massive Paella pans on display and we watched as they walked us through the steps of making a Paella. Not only did we learn how to cook paella, but some of us also got to participate in stirring and preparing the paella! 2 Paellas contained chicken and rabbit, and the other 2 contained seafood. We were out in an enclosed patio so we could enjoy the nice weather at the same time. They used huge gas rings and huge pans, called “Paelleras”, especially for paella. The best bit was that when all was cooked, we got to have a feast on the paella! They also gave us mussels and salad so we were stuffed! I’m still not sure whether I preferred the meat Paella or the seafood Paella, both were nice…although I had never eaten rabbit before! Afterward, we headed back to the academy with the tour guide and went back to our families for the night where we had dinner, chatted about our day and headed for bed.
Centre of Spanish Studies class – outside