Houses and Cultural Differences

Houses and Hospitality

Today I was invited to my classmate, Maria's home for a Swedish lemonade and a lunch of Spanish ham and melon, following our group lesson with Jose.  As we had each prepared a written paper on the characteristics of people in our country for class that day, I learned that for the Swedes  presentation of the home is very important.  This is very different than the Spaniards as for them the house is less important.  In fact, for the Spaniards, most of their socializing occurs on the street in paseo in the evenings and when they are out and about in public.

Maria, however is Swedish and as I learned in Jose's class today, the home is essential.  Much care and attention is given to ensuring that the home environment is beautiful and organized.  Maria enjoys entertaining.  She has a lovely home to receive people and is very gracious in extending herself in this way.

In addition to learning the Spanish language I am also learning about different ways of life, world cultures and how the people of the world prioritize their time, work and family commitments.

Today is the 14th day in a row of low to mid 80 degree weather with pure sunshine.  That;s mad! (or so they would say in Ireland). 

www.spanish-school-herradura.com
email info@spanish-school-herradura.com

Learning Indefinate Preterite Verb conjugations (Past Tense) through visiting the history museum in Almunecar, Spain

As I studied past tense with Amelia in a private lesson session on Friday afternoon, I thought what better way to consolidate my learning than to go to a history museum.  I took the 8:45 AM bus to Almunecar and paid 235 euros for entry.  I had the place to myself and took my time reading the descriptions first in Spanish and then in English and vice versa trying to decide which was the better method of learning for me.  I discovered that there was one small advantage to reading the material first in Spanish in that if in doing this I was able to successfully get through a whole paragraph without any errors in translation I would give myself points in my head accompanied by a silent and imaginary round of applause for myself.  Other than that both methods of language acquisition are equally valid.

www.spanish-school-herradura.com
email info@spanish-school-herradura.com