A brief guide to Barcelona

Barcelona is rich in culture and history so sightseers should be well catered for in this great city. Read our mini-guide below and you’ll see there is a lot to do on a budget that is suitable for nearly everyone.

Fabada – rich Spanish pork and bean stew

Fabada is a comforting traditional stew from Asturias made with large white beans, black pudding, pork and chorizo. My friend, from Madrid, made fabada on the weekend to celebrate her little princess’ first birthday. She says, “cooking fabada is always a reason for joy and bustle”. It’s such a heavy meal that you need double the alcohol if you want to get drunk after eating fabada.

Learning Spanish in Seville: a first-hand experience

My colleague Lauren, who took a language holiday in Seville in September, shares with us her experiences learning Spanish in this beautiful Andalucian city. She tells us how her Spanish has improved and gives us her all-important tips for a holiday of this type.

Spanish Halloween vocabulary

Halloween is approaching soon, but there’s enough time to brush up Spanish Halloween vocabulary . Here are a few Halloween-related words in Spanish:

Pumpkin	la calabaza
Witch	la bruja
Broom	la escoba
Candle	la vela
Costume	el disfraz
Vampire	el vampiro
Devil	el diablo

Click here for more Halloween related words in Spanish.

Top 5 things to see in the Costa Brava

North-east Spain, the region of “Cataluña” more precisely, is especially known for its warm and international capital Barcelona. However, to the north of this region where it borders with France, the “Costa Brava” offers a totally different type of scenery.

Free Spanish learning resources

Here are few Spanish resources that I found recently. I hope you’ll also find them useful in your language learning.

Useful articles for language learners

Here are some useful articles to help you in your language learning.

Spanish tortilla – grandma’s secret recipe

My colleague Ernesto has kindly allowed me to share his grandma’s secret tortilla recipe in the blog. Lauren (my other colleague who is also learning Spanish) and I are going to make tortilla using this recipe to see who makes the best tortilla. She doesn’t like onions, so her version would be a bit different to this one though. I’ll post about our tortillas after we make them!

What is your motivation behind learning other languages?

I speak three languages fluently – English, Hindi & Telugu. Learning these languages happened very easily because Telugu is my mother tongue and I speak it at home with my family. Hindi was  spoken in North India, where I grew up, and also at school. I then learnt English as a part of my schooling, but improved much more after coming to the UK. Having this knowledge of three languages, I thought learning another new language would be very easy, but I was completely wrong.

Why is Chile a great place to learn Spanish?

An amazing setting to study

Chile is a big country, very thin but very long. This makes it a country with all types of climate. The north is one of the driest deserts of the world (the Atacama desert) where you can see spectacular sights such as geysers and beautiful valleys. The city of San Pedro de Atacama organises a lot of guided excursions and activities in the desert. It is better to take a guided excursion as some places can be dangerous if you go alone. In this picture, you can see the Tatio’s geysers at sunrise. To see this, you will need to be there at 4am, but you will not regret it.