Day 8

Hola! Wednesday. Now we had got into a routine, we arose for breakfast around 8.30am, got showered, dressed and went for breakfast.  After breakfast we took our daily walk down to Schola, for our first Spanish lesson of the day with Oana, the lady who has been teaching us Spanish since we arrived here on the 20th October. In todays lesson we re-capped times and body parts and also moved on to foods and what we may want to ask for in the local supermarket, which all of us visit on a daily basis.

After Oanas lesson which lasts about an hour and a half, we had a quick 15-20 minute break, before our other Spanish lesson with Ariel.  Ariels lessons are more practical rather than theory, so it´s nice to go out on to the local park and do practical work but still learn Spanish at the same time. Ariel speaks mainly Spanish, so it´s good for us to use the Spanish we have learnt with Oana in the morning in the sessions with Ariel.

After Ariels session we went for lunch at 'our' restaurant.  Todays menu... PAELLA! The famous Spanish dish. It was chicken Paella, with a nice chocolate mousse to finish it off. Lunch is a nice time of day, because it allows everyone to mingle and have a laugh outside of the classroom and the coaching environment.  The table still wasn`t the same with two empty seats after Andy (Jones-Thompson) and Ryan (Stant) had vacated :(...

After lunch we headed back to Schola for our eagerly anticipated feedback from Tiny Tim (Greg) and The Man For All Occasions (Matt)... Everyone likes to hear what they have done well, which is good, but the points for improvement are also very useful not only to help us but to keep us on our toes aswell. After everyone had recieved their feedback we headed back to our residence, quick change, coaching stuff sorted and back out again to catch the Metro in to Betera.  When we arrived in Betera the swimming group splits from the rest as we are at different facilities.  I can't speak for everyone, but our swimming group felt it went really well and we took alot of confidence from the session and were really happy.

We got back on the Metro around 8.30pm back to Moncada, ready for our tea. Tonights menu... Beef Stew, which was different considering we're 4,000 miles away from England, yet we had a traditional English meal. It was rather decent though.  Today was Mr. James Davies' 17th birthday, yet his mental age is still 7. Happy birthday matey! Therefore for dessert it was birthday cake! High 5! After everyone had finished we headed back to our residence and chilled out in the meeting room where everyone had a good chat and a laugh.  Then off to bed we went, smiles on our faces, knowing they would soon be gone when we had to be up for 8.00 am the next morning.

Gracias Por Leer! (Thanks for reading)

Gareth Jones :)