Abingdonian 2020

11 www.abingdon.org.uk Michaelmas Term Spanish Exchange On Thursday 10 October students from Abingdon and St Helen’s set out on an adventure to north west Spain to improve their Spanish and experience a different culture firsthand. The journey was easy and uneventful, except for one of the Abingdon boys losing his boarding pass! Soon enough we landed in Santiago de Compostela and after a short bus ride arrived at the renowned Peleteiro School (ranked best school in Spain in 2016). The first evening we all met up in a local restaurant to chat and reflect on our first few hours whilst eating some wonderful Spanish food. A menu mishap saw me ordering a huge plate of octopus for dinner - a baptism of fire! Friday’s activities during the day included walking a 7km stretch of the Camino de Santiago to the famous cathedral, which was breathtaking. Senora Fraile and Senora Payne also gave us the opportunity to go out with them to a traditional Spanish tapas restaurant - it was ‘muy delicioso’ and it all disappeared within a matter of minutes. We spent the weekend with our host families. Mine took me up to the coast to a place called A Coruña, where we went for a long walk around the peninsula and then climbed to the top of a hill that had amazing views out over the sea and surrounding city. Others were taken on tours all over Galicia. On Sunday we all met up at the local trampoline park; after an hour of bouncing, we went out for more Spanish cuisine. A Coruña was also where we went on Monday for a school outing, visiting an aquarium with Gaston the bull shark, a fun and interactive science museum, and an ancient lighthouse that is the oldest still in use today - Torre de Hercules. During the second week in school, we spent a couple of days with our exchanges, experiencing the Spanish style of lessons, having lots of fun in the Latin dance and folklore workshops, playing basketball, and being interviewed by the very sweet junior school pupils. Their English was considerably better than our Spanish! We said our goodbyes knowing that we would soon see our new friends again, when they made the return journey to Abingdon. In late February the Spanish exchanges landed in the UK on a day that began with snow, continued with hail and ended with glorious sunshine - clearly they had brought the Spanish weather with them. Similar to our visit, they had trips during the day organised by school that took them to places such as Bath, Winchester and on a tour of the wonderful and exotic town of Abingdon. On Saturday I took my exchange, along with a bunch of others, into Oxford for a bit of cultural immersion: eating at the classic English restaurant - Nandos. Afterwards we went ice skating where it was clear who had done it before and who was a complete novice. We all went home with plenty of bumps and bruises that night. On Sunday we took the train into London, inadvertently meeting up at Paddington with virtually everyone on the exchange. Organising fifty teenagers was like herding cats, so we split into smaller groups and went on a mini-sightseeing tour around London, visiting Tower Bridge, the Shard and Big Ben. We also did a bit of shopping so the exchanges could purchase souvenirs for themselves and their families. We got the train back home and arrived back to toad in the hole, a food that my exchange found intriguing. He obviously enjoyed it as he asked for the recipe! The Spanish Exchange is one of the most enjoyable things you can do as part of the Spanish iGCSE. It was tremendous fun and I had an amazing experience. My Spanish listening and speaking improved immensely. However, the best thing by far is that we have made lifelong friends with our exchanges and the wider group. I very much hope to visit my exchange and his family again at some point, and they know that they are always welcome here. I thoroughly recommend the Exchange to anyone who does Spanish. Matthew Jarvis, 5MTJ