Salamanca Spanish Course

Life in a campervan is a pretty close quarters experience.  It is a small space.  If there are two of you sharing it you come to know where to put yourself, when to sit, when to go out of the van, how to move around so that you don't spend your time falling over each other.  After three weeks travelling in the van in Northern Spain Ian and I had got very good at it.  We had also spent most of our waking and sleeping moments together so it was strange to hoist my rucksack onto my shoulder and turn my back on him to find the apartment which would be my home in Salamanca for a week while I did my Spanish course.   Ian was going to drive home to Wales through Spain and France.  I didn't watch him go.  I was too busy wrangling my bags into the tiny lift.

I had decided to do another intensive week in the hopes of boosting my Spanish.  I seemed to have stalled frustratingly at a level where I could read quite well but struggled with speaking and listening.  Hoping to get every possible advantage from the week I had also booked to stay with a host family.  Gulp.  The last time I stayed with a host family it was after my French A levels when I was eighteen.  As the lift whirred, I wondered how they would cope with a sixty four year old.  Clang went the doors.  Here we go.  Too late to back out now.

My hostess Lola was waiting for me on the fourth floor with her teenage son behind her.  A flood of warm, welcoming and incomprehensible Spanish poured from her as she flung her arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks.  Their dog barked noisily from the flat behind her.  I summoned all my carefully memorised phrases about just learning, not speaking spanish very well, could she say it again a little more slowly.  I smiled a lot.  My room was small but clean and comfortable with its own toilet, which was a luxury I hadn't been expecting, and I escaped with relief into it while I did my unpacking. Then, clothes neatly hung in the wardrobe and books set out on the bedside table,  I consulted my Spanish dictionary, slipped my phone into my  pocket and launched myself back out into the flat on my Spanish adventure.

Salamanca is amazingly beautiful.  It is a perfect small city, home to the oldest university in Europe, where every building glows in a golden stone.  When you aren't wandering through tiny squares or gazing at cloisters and towers you will be sitting at one of the thousands of bars which are around every street corner.  A friend who is a Spanish teacher had suggested it as an ideal place to do a course and I could see why.  Just stunning.  Ian and I had chosen to have a couple of days camping together just outside Salamanca over the weekend before the course started and had taken a walking tour with a local guide so I had a rough idea of how the city fitted together.  We had found the language school on one of our own walks and I could see that it must be about fifteen minutes walk from Lola's apartment.  On the first morning we were meant to be at the school for eight o' clock to have a test to establish our level.  It seemed very early when I got up at seven, head still reeling from the previous evening and my attempts to make conversation.  Incredibly I could apparently make myself understood but I couldn't easily understand the response!

The plaza mayor was quiet with a cold wind blowing as I crossed it.  My first exchange with Lola that morning had not been entirely successful as I had totally failed to understand that she was offering to heat my coffee in the microwave.  She looked rather mystified as she handed a cup over in response to my cheery assurances that this was fine.  It was only when I sipped the totally cold coffee that I twigged what she had been saying.  Yes indeed, I did want it caliente, if only I had realised!

At the school other students were milling about looking lost.  I was relieved to see that there seemed to be a complete age range from early twenties to my age and older.  Looking around I was pretty sure that I was not going to be the oldest, although if I had been it wouldn't have been a problem.  We were herded into a classroom and the head of the school talked to us in Spanish for a few minutes about what to expect.  This was very well done.  There were all levels of student there and his Spanish was slow and clear with slides in Spanish with some English translation for those who were absolute beginners.  After my confusion with Lola it was a big relief to find that I understood it all.  We had about an hour to do a test to establish which class we should join and again I was pleased to find that I was officially at the beginning of the intermediate course.  Since I have been trying to learn for about two years I would have been disappointed if I were still a total beginner!

We spilled out into the little school courtyard after the test and went for coffee in the cafe attached to the school.  There were all nationalities, shaking hands and introducing themselves, some speaking Spanish and some English as their common language.  I was quickly swept up by two women of about my own age who were sharing accommodation at another host family.  One was a New Zealander spending a month learning Spanish before spending two months walking one of the many caminos in Spain which finish in Santiago.  She had done several of these pilgrimage walks already and I was in awe of her fitness.  The other had just taken voluntary redundancy from her job in London and was spending three months in Spain.  She had done French and Spanish as a degree many years ago and was hoping the course would revive her Spanish before she started on her travels.  Her Spanish was way better than mine.  They were sparky and interesting and in no time we were agreeing to meet up in the evening and do some exploring together.

And then into the class itself.  There were only four of us which was great: a Japanese guy of about thirty, two Germans, one in his early twenties and one of around fifty, and me.  Our teacher was Isobel, small, dark, warm and lively and beautifully, magically comprehensible.

So the days settled into a pattern: class from nine to one with a fifteen minute break and a change of teacher; one conversation class from one to two with five of us in it and then immediately another with just two students.  By the time I came out I was reeling and starving.  When Ian and I did another course last year in Seville we took the class without the conversation options.  I think the best idea is probably the class plus one conversation hour.  Two was maybe overdoing it!  Lunch was back at Lola's.  When she had told me that she worked in the morning and "la tarde" I had assumed that she would want to give me an evening meal.  In fact she was home for a period in the early afternoon before returning to work and what suited her was to give me a meal at about three.  Once I had accustomed myself to the very different routine this actually worked very well as we did not generally eat in the evening until after ten.

So the days were intense with the course and a meal and then a blessed period of a couple of hours when I didn't need to talk to anyone in any language.  I generally met up with Jenny and Helen at around 7.30 and we wandered and had a glass of wine and tapas.  On two evenings we discovered free concerts being performed by music students graduating from the conservatorio.  It was a magical experience to listen to classical Spanish guitar in a converted church in an audience where we seemed to be the only English visitors.

And everywhere we went there were beautiful things to see.  This is the Casa de Lis, now a gallery, shop and cafe, with the most astonishing stained glass.

Wednesday was a public holiday which was probably a life saver as it gave us a day to wander and spend time out, a buffer in a week of high octane Spanish learning.  I felt I learnt an enormous amount and by the time I left I was quite confident to speak Spanish in restaurants and shops and at the railway station and was finding that people were no longer responding to me in English!  I was understanding my hostess about seventy per cent of the time which was a big improvement but I still felt that I needed to practise more listening.  My spoken Spanish improved in leaps and bounds.  After that it was sad to discover that, having been home a fortnight, in the first conversation session I had with my language exchange friend who lives in Valencia, my Spanish was dreadful.  I put that down to a nine hour drive from Scotland the day before which meant that my brain was not in gear!

My flight home was on Sunday and I had a night in Madrid, having taken the train from Salamanca on Saturday afternoon.  This is the only bit of the experience that I would try to do differently as I was very ready to come home and would have liked to fly out on the Saturday.  But the whole week was a very special experience and I would love to go again.  I am really glad I did it but there is still a long way to go!