Imogen Calderwood
ADVENTURES for the weekend included getting painfully lost on the mean streets of Sevilla at 4am (they’re actually very friendly streets, with a lot of people willing to give directions to lost English people…)
But we can put that down to unfortunate amounts of tequila – which on the upside does definitely help with speaking Spanish – and move on…
Other, slightly more cultured, enterprises saw me heading off at what felt like a very early hour on Saturday morning with Clic to see the sights of Cordoba.
They include a lot of very dainty little streets filled with ceramic and jewellery shops, and an astonishing number of holy buildings. ?
Like a lot of places in Andalucia, Cordoba is the product of three cultures living together and meshing together. So you have the Islamic and Jewish imprinted with the Catholic, and the town is enriched by the architectural styles of all three. But you’d be better off coming to see it for yourself than relying on my probably misguided interpretation.
And of course the Mesquita is stunning.
In other news, summer is clearly nearly here because the mosquitos are running riot in my room.
The Spanish is coming along nicely I think – can definitely understand a lot more of what’s being said to me. Right now the learning process feels like when you’re trying to clear out a room whose cupboards are filled with junk.
You have to bring all the stuff out into the open so the room looks like a bomb’s hit it, before you can really start making it better.
In that sense, learning all the grammar is probably making my speech more stilted, because I’m suddenly aware of the way sentences should be put together rather than just desperately trying to get my point across…
Hopefully there will come a very happy point in the near future that will be a beautiful combination of accurate grammar and fluidity. But we shall see…
Word of the day: un/a fiestero/a. Someone who likes to party.
