First Post

Hello, and welcome to my blog about my year in Catalonia!

Before I left the UK several people suggested that I write a blog to keep people updated about what I'm doing on my year abroad. After having to describe what I've been doing so far to quite a few different people, I decided that it was actually a very good idea. So here it is.

For anyone who isn't exactly sure what I'm doing out here, then I am working as an English-language assistant at a secondary school (I.E.S. Castell del Quer) in a small Catalan town called Prats de Lluçanès . For twelve hours a week I do speaking classes with groups of students, and I have the rest of the week free to travel around the country and immerse myself in local culture (or something like that).

I'm doing this as part of my degree (History and Modern European Languages), with the aim of improving my language skills when I'm not in the classroom teaching English. The only problem with this is that the language component of my degree primarily consists of Spanish. Naturally this means that the main goal of my year here should be to consolidate and build upon my Spanish skills.

This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I've come to rural Catalonia, where the spoken language is, of course, Catalan. In the area where I work and live, Castilian Spanish is spoken infrequently, and some people are loath to use it at all. Fortunately, however, I studied Catalan for a year before coming here and am picking it up quickly.

Catalonia has a very strong sense of cultural identity, largely centred around the Catalan language, and many Catalans are in favour of becoming independent from Spain. I decided that it made much more sense to call this a "Catalan" rather than a "Spanish" blog in recognition of this acute sense of being different from the rest of the country. After spending all your time around people who think like this it is hard not to be influenced by them!

I intend to post on here fairly frequently with tales of what I've been up to, snippets about my life here in Catalonia, and also some comments about Catalan (and Spanish) culture in general.

I hope you find it interesting, and please feel free to leave comments on any of the posts!