First week in Mallorca

This week has flown by! 

It is crazy to think that we just arrived last Sunday. We have been busy everyday since we landed in Palma.  Our first day of classes started on Tuesday, and the students are all settled in for their summer session of Spanish class with our awesome teachers, Tamara, Marina, and Laura. 

In the first picture,  Parker, Kyra, Gabriel, Paola, and Robert are working on a speaking assignment in class. In the second picture, Yamila, Zoe, Denisse, and Ana Maria are hard at work as well. 

Part of our day includes going to Spanish class, but also participating in cultural activities throughout the week. This week, we started out with a scavenger hunt around Palma's city center. The students had to find landmarks around the city, where one of our staff members handed out the next clue to the following landmark. In groups of four, all groups were able to complete the task and learned their way around the city!

The winners of our scavenger hunt! Zoe, Deeya, Caroline, and Ben! 

On Wendesday and Thursday, we separated into two groups and visited two emblematic spots in Palma, the palace Almudaina and la catedral. The students were guided by tour guides, where the received a lot of rich information about the history of these two monuments.  The tours were done in Spanish, and at the end of each tour we shared out an interesting fact that they learned from our tour, and they had to do it in Spanish. Every student was able to say one interesting fact WITHOUT REPEATING A PREVIOUS FACT THAT WAS SAID! The comprehension level that the students have is incredible! They are all doing a great job absorbing new historical information, all in Spanish not to mention again. Their vocabulary is expanding immensley. 

Group 1 in Almudaina. This picture was taken on the king's patio. How natural that the king would have a picture perfect view of the cathedral from his patio. (Left to Right: Elliot, Jacob, Ana Maria, Sara, Caroline, Jaimie, Trinity, Parker, Denisse, Nick, Gabriel, Zoe, Katie, and Natalie)

On Friday, we had one of our best cultural excursions yet. But, I will leave you all in suspense as another one of our blog writers will go into detail about this excursion on our next blog post. But today, we ended the week with our cultural activities taking us up the mountain to a beautiful town called Valldemossa, and then to a port on the other side of the mountatin called Port d'Soller, where we swam in the Mediterranean Sea. In Valldemossa, we walked around the quaint Mallorcan town and had a mid-day snack called coca de patata. But the kids' favorite activity was going swimming in the ocean.  They are taking advantage of living the island life!  

We have another crazy week ahead of us, but we are all excited to continue the new adventures that await us. Until next time, hasta luego!