A New Blog From A Volunteer In Spain

One of GeoVisions' volunteers on Conversation Corps-Spain published a new Blog and is updating her posts regularly.  It is really worth a read.

Brandi is updating about her host family, her tutoring the family and her outings in and out of Madrid. In one post, What A Life, she writes about what it is like to tutor a family and how some people can earn quite a bit of extra cash tutoring others around Madrid.  She includes a great photo of Puerto del Sol.

In her most recent post, Time Flies When You're Having Fun, she writes about her experiences around the famous El Rastro market and how she celebrates her one-month anniversary on Conversation Corps-Spain.

Here is an excerpt from Adventures of Curly Girlie: One Girl's Quest to Conquer the World:

The tutoring is going great. I am tutoring the whole family throughout the day, when I am home, as well as my scheduled time of 7-10 p.m. It is very informal. We traditionally just have a casual conversation and then I correct them when they say the incorrect words or help them when they are struggling with what to say in English. I help the mother, Maria, translate some of her work documents in English and because I am great with Powerpoint I help her jazz up her presentations. She is extremely grateful.

Maria was telling me even if she learns English she is unsure if she will ever understand American English because we have so many sayings that do not make sense to her. She wants me to teach her these sayings. I tend to say A LOT of these American sayings or idioms,  For example,

• right off the bat
• off her rocker
• thats the way the cookie crumbles
• would not be caught dead, and so on.

For this reason, I have been compiling a notebook full of all the idioms I use and can possibly think of. I write out the idiom, explain what it means, then provide an example of how one could use the idiom in a sentence. When I leave I am going to present it to the family. In the meantime, I just read the family a few of them a day. They find the sayings very entertaining!

Check out the "Volunteer Blogs" tag on the right and read what others write about this amazing program.

Are you headed to Spain with the Conversation Corps?