Tomorrow, July 6th, I head off to the South of Spain once again. I am heading back to Benalmádena near Málaga. In fact, the exact location is Arroyo de la Miel which is a town in between the towns of Benalmádena Pueblo and Benalmádena Costa.
I will again be studying Spanish at Collegio Maravillas .
As usual, the administration was completed over the Internet and everything went smoothly.
Board member Arturo and myself both attended classes there this past Easter and enjoyed the experience. See postings and pics in the thread Benalmadena, Books and Board Members
I will update this topic on my progress.

Rob

Have a safe trip tomorrow and enjoy your month in Spain. If only I had the summer off.... I would love to take some more Spanish lessons. Take lots of photos and share your progress with us here at MadridMan. I am sure you will also get in a lot of tennis while you are there.

I still have two weeks of vacation and I am hoping to get to Galicia at the end of September or early October. My friends from Malaga and Los Boliches may be able to meet me there.

Un saludo.... Arturo

Saturday 8th July
I went to the school yeaterday to pay my fees for the the course and accomodation. Everything went smoothly and it was nice to see the staff again. I also bumped into one of the students who was in my class last year and it was nice to talk with him.
The weather is very hot with the thermometer still in the 20´s even at 10 o´clock at night. As always, the hottest part of the day is between 3 and 6 in the afternoon.
The accommodation has been good and it felt very comfortable being back with the same family. The food has been excellent with lots of good Andalucian cooking: fish, salad, lentils, alubia beans and so on.
Arturo - We went up the that venta (Los Condes) between Mijas and Coin for lunch today, and you will be pleased to hear that the Gambas Pil Pil were as good as ever!

Street snaps
I heard about the Spanish double parking - here is some triple parking!


Enjoying a break and some refreshment


A view to the mountains from Arroyo de la Miel

Ahhhh Gambas Pil Pil my favorite.

Back in April I would have gambas after class. Each day I tried a different chiringuita on the beach. Since I usually visit my friends for New Years,I don't get to go to the chiringuitas. They are closed at the end of the year.

Enjoy your classes at Maravillas. Please say hello to Rosa and Carolina if you see them. I hope to take classes again when I go back early next year.

Take Care.... Arturo

Thanks Arturo - I will pass on your regards.
Sunday 9th July
Today was one of those days when things just fell into place! Following a tennis match in the morning, we were invited to share luch with some members of the tennis club - algo de picar (a selection of tapas and you just helped yourself).
The food was good:
Jamón Serrano (Cured ham)
Queso Manchogo (cheese from Manchego region of Spain)
Bacalao vizcaina (cod in a pepper and tomato sauce)
Stuffed peppers
and lots of bread.

Following lunch, we were invited to the villa of a married couple to watch the final of Wimbledon.
There were eight of us there and yet more food was served. It was an enjoyable time, with some of the group supporting Nadal and some supporting Federer.
Later that evening, the main event was the Final of the World Cup football.

Quite a day of sport!

Street Snaps

One of the many sculptures that adorn the roundabouts in Arroyo 0 this one is called La Bola


Eating in the evening


Mounted police

Monday 10th July
the activities for this week are:
Mon flamenco dancing and the film "Todo sob mi madre" by Almodóvar
Tues A welcome party
Wed Fantasia Ecuestre - an Andalucian horse show
Thurs A film - "Bowling for Columbine"
Fri another party!
Sat a trip to Granada

I find myself in a class for teachers of Spanish - help! Today, the classes were about:
Grammar
This consisted of looking at a variety of uses of the future including: certainty now and in the future, probability, reproach, commands, and concession. Then we looked at the future perfect (habrá estudiado = he will have studied) and then we did lots of oral examples.
In the vocabulary and conversation class we looked at a piece of writing by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910 – 2004), and then did some exercises and grammar arising from the story.
It was a tough day for day one!

Tuesday 11th July
Grammar class
If I thought yesterday was tough going in the grammar class, then today was even tougher! It was all about the use of the conditional (I would.., I would have etc) but you express things in a variety of ways:
Expressing the future in the past (he said he would do it by yesterday)
Creating a future hypothesis (I would help you if I could)
Probability, conjecture and approximation (Why was he feeling bad – it would have been because he…)
Concessive statements (I would go, but…)
Courtesy (Could you…. )
For those interested the book we are using is by Concha Moreno and is called “Curso de Perfectionamiento, Hablar, escribir y pensar en español”

Communication class
This was all about strategies for teaching Spanish to children. It was interesting.

Our class is made up of one Italian teacher of Spanish, one French teacher of Spanish, two Swedish teachers of Spanish, one teacher of French and German from Scotland and myself (from Scotland).
There are classes for adults operating at 8 different levels, from absolute beginners to this one, the class for teachers of Spanish.
Tonight is the welcome party.

The food provided by my hostess continues to be of very high quality. Yesterday, the main meal consisted of a great mixed salad and the home made white beans in a tomato and garlic sauce. There were better than any baked beans that I have ever tasted!
Today, another great salad, with large prawns (langostinos) cooked in garlic and chilli and spinach (espinacas) with cheese and cream.

Both yesterday and today saw very high temperatures, with 43 degrees Centigrade is some areas of Andalucía, but the worst aspect was the high humidity here on the coast.
It was tough on the tennis court yesterday!

Wednesday 12th July
The Welcome Party was good last night with a 50 of the adult students there. There were lost of free tapas to eat and it was a good opportunity to meet students from other classes.

The grammar class today continued with more on probability and hypothesis, with a variety of exercises, mixing up the different tenses with past, present and future. We then move on to look at some equivalences of the imperative tense (commands). I did not realise that there were so many methods of issuing commands and orders!
This was followed by looking at the use of some special commands that have become a part of everyday Spanish and have lost there original meaning (¡vaya!, ¡anda!, ¡mira!, ¡dale!, ¡toma! and ¡venga!). We had homework to do on this and I asked some of the Spanish at the tennis club which should be used in the sentences that we were given – they found this difficult, so what hope is there for me?

The communication class was interesting and we looked at short advertisements that had been downloaded from www.publi.tv - the purpose of this was to see how we might make use of them in teaching Spanish. There was some good discussion.

We had a thunder storm this afternoon and it rained quite heavily for a bit.

Thursday 13th July

The Grammar class was reasonably straightforward this morning, as we were matching the nine indicative tenses to the four subjunctive tenses.
In the communications class, we talked about La Movida in Madrid during the 1980´s. This was the period following the death of Franco and when the people of Madrid” let there hair down at night”, due to their new-found freedom. We also listened to and talked about a variety of Spanish pop music from the 1980´s.

A received a pleasant surprise in the afternoon. Suddenly, out of the blue, the son of the owner of the tennis club where I play offered myself and the former coach of the club free tickets of a tennis tournament that was taking place in Marbella at the Puento Romano Hotel. This was a very generous offer which we gladly accepted.
The tournament is the Senior Nations Cum and is being played between teams from Austria (players: Muster, Schaller and Antonitch), United States (players: Courier, Krickstein and Stark), Spain (players: Sanchez-Vicario, Bruguera and Casal) and France (Pioline, Champion and Bahrami).
Some of the more senior board members might remember these ex professionals!

The drive back from Marbella was interesting in that the night sky was constantly illuminated by bolts of lightening. This continued for some time. The weather has been very humid and in the afternoon, there was yet another thunderstorm and more rain.

Tennis in Marbella:
The refreshmant area

The arena and court


The VIP Area

Baharami entertains the crowd


Friday 14th July

We continued with matching the indicative tenses to the subjunctive tenses and then layered this with which types of verbs and expression demand the indicative and which demand the subjunctive. We then did some exercises on this – not easy.
In the communication class we talked about the DELE exams. There are the exams administered by the Cervantes Institute and are used for obtaining employment in Spain. They are targeted at foreign speakers of Spanish.

Saturday 16th July – Trip to Granada

We set off from Arroyo de la Miel at about 8.30am and arrived at La Alhambra at about 11.00am. This included a 30 minute breakfast and bathroom stop.
Here is where we stopped:


The Alhambra is ENORMOUS – for those who have been there, you know just how big it is. It is very impressive, with its magnificent gardens,

palaces,


gates, towers


and living quarters.
My favourite was the “Room of Secrets”, where you could stand in one corner of the room, whisper something to the wall and the person in the diagonally opposite corner could hear perfectly well what you had said!! Here are some other images:
The intricate tile work

The engravings

The water ponds



We spent about 3 hours there and then headed off to the centre of Granada for some free time and lunch. Yes, the tapas are free in most of the bars in Granada, and of high quality. Later, we went to an Arab teahouse in the old part of the town centre. In this part of the city, the Muslim influence is very evident.
Later in the afternoon we toured the Capella Real and saw the tombs of Fernando and Isabel, the Royal family.
The coach trip back was a bit uncomfortable since the air conditioning on the coach was not functioning properly and a rest stop at an air-conditioned service facility was more than welcome.
We arrived back in Arroyo de la Miel at about 8.00pm
It was a very interesting day.