Hi everyone, here we go with a new post.
Two months and a half. This is the time I have been in London until now.
Never had I imagined that studying English would be so stressful! Little by little, I have added new activities to my daily routine. Currently, I am working as volunteer for two charities. The last one I joined develops activities to promote social integration of needed people. In order to get that purpose, they organise games taking the 2012 Olympics as an excuse. They are sponsored by Cadbury (http://www.spotsvstripes.com/default.aspx). What team do you prefer to join: spots or stripes ;-)
I am also teaching Maths to a woman who wants to improve her numeracy. Seemingly, there are many illiterate people in the UK. The woman is from Barbados and her English is a bit odd, but all the same, it is another opportunity to engage in conversation with people and to learn new vocabulary.
Last week, I joined a language club. It is intended to people meet and have language swaps. In my group, there are English people wanting to learn Spanish and Spanish people wanting to learn English. So, when we meet, we speak Spanish for an hour and English for another hour. There are other groups where people exchange English for French, English for German, etc.
People in the English-Spanish group meet on Tuesday and Sunday every two weeks. In addition, every other Tuesday it's a group of only-English where people meet to speak English. Although there are some English people, most of the people that attend the only-English sessions are foreigners, especially Spanish people. In the last meeting, there were about 15 people and more than a half were Spaniards. We are like a plague! Anyway, it is stunning to find so many Spanish people and to listen to their stories. In fact, listening to the other's stories is very instructive. The other day, someone told me about the Callan Method to speak English. According to this method, you can learn English in a quarter of the time. What do you think about it?
Besides, the club organise activities such as excursions which allow people to socialise and know each other. Actually, these activities are very interesting because they are planned by English people who show us different places in London or around. Today we have visited the Horniman Museum (do you remember the tea brand??) Yes, John Horniman was one of the first merchants to have the idea of selling tea in packets.
Fortunately, most people in the excursion was English so I have had the opportunity to speak for a while. The school is as a training, but for me, what really matters are these occasions when you have to use English to communicate with people in real situations.
People in the club are very supportive. We all do the best we can and everyone encourages the others to have a go.
In addition, I try to get involved in other activities as conferences, literary presentations, reading groups, etc. Here, they have a great sense of community and there are also events in which people can participate. I often go to the library to collect information about this sort of activities.
For example, tomorrow I am attending the presentation of a book: "Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You". It's free and we'll have refreshments as the author talk about his new book.
This week, every day from Tuesday to Saturday there will be an event with "Live music & English Conversation". The event is hosted by The Church of England.
Although each evening will include a short talk introducing Christianity, it may be interesting to attend at least one meeting. In fact, I don't care if they speak about Christianity or Budism, what it is important for me is to have the chance to listen and speak to real people.
Ah, I've just remembered: tomorrow morning I have an interview to get the National Insurance Number.
By the way, this week we are enjoying a wonderful weather in London. In fact, it looks as if the summer was coming again. We are registering record-breaking temperatures, up to 30 degrees.
That's all for now. As always, I look forward to hearing your commentaries, in English of course.
