Category Archives: English Heritage

Welcome to our school year 2020-2021

English Heritage, French culture, German culture, Hispanic Heritage, Italian cultura, multicultural Bedford, Multilingual, Spanish cultura, , , ,

hi teamWelcome to our new school year 2020-2021!

Hope you all had a nice break. Life is very different from what we were used to and our last term of the school year 2019-2020 finished without the traditional celebrations, multicultural dinner, paella rally…

I am so pleased with how everyone adapted to lessons online back in March and how students are asking for more online provision that suits them at any location.

This summer new activities were on offer. Alessandra took us on a tour of Italy, with culture, history and real Italian cooking.

With Elena a few “peregrinos” did the camino challenge where walks and cultural challenges were added weekly. The feedback has been fantastic, therefore we are looking into our next cultural activities. Backstage tutors are preparing cultural activities to add to our weekly provision.

The new normal has brought a new dimension to our little language centre and our students are learning languages and culture as well as technology. I know, sometimes it is a very challenging combination but we are here to learn together and to support each other at good times and bad.

This Autumn will be challenging as the days will draw in and everyone will stay at home as much as possible but tutors as much as students will be looking forward to our weekly meeting.

If you have not booked, please follow the link to do it. If you have done it, thank you very much.

We are offering new courses for total beginners… Do you know anyone interested? Please pass our contact around!

any questions

We will contact you next week confirming your course, etc….

Please if you have any queries let me know,

Thanks you and see you soon,

Elena

Salud from Sherryland!

English Heritage, Hispanic Heritage, Spain, Spanish cultura, Spanish Food, Spanish travelling, Spanish wine, Uncategorised, ,

        

Just back from Cadiz, Spain, the area where sherry is produced. What a privilege to take some of our Spanish students on this cultural immersion. A joy for the wine lovers, history lovers and culture lovers

Sherry, we called it Jerez in Spain is a fortified wine only produced in this part of Spain, the Sherry triangle, and covers the towns of Jerez de la Frontera, Puerto de SantaMaria & Sanlucar de Barrameda.

This time we stayed in a lovely converted convent, Monasterio de San Miguel in Puerto de Santa Maria. A place full history, this is an excellent base to explore the area.

To learn more about sherry visiting a couple of bodegas is a must. To really appreciate it, one has to taste the different wines, fino, oloroso, Pedro Ximenez just to mention a few, as well as my favourite one, Palo cortado.

This area of Spain is well known for their Andalusian horses. A horse riding performance is only possible to watch in Jerez and Vienna. We did not only go to a performance but went on a “calesa” (carriage) ride.

Cadiz, claimed to be the oldest city in Western Europe, was reached by ferry from El Puerto.

A culture pot, Founded by the Phoenicians, every other civilisation helped to shape this city full of character, light, sun and welcoming people.

In Sevilla with our fantastic guides Emma and Aidan we moved to the times of Jews and Moors living together. At Los Reales Alcazares palace Christian traditions and Moorish architecture get put together. This mixture of cultures could be found in a lot of aspects of Spanish life, and a good example is in the Spanish cuisine that we sampled on numerous occasions.

What a fantastic experience! Thank you everyone for making this trip so special!!

Katharine of Aragon talk by Alison Weir

There were 25 of us who went to the talk about Katharine of Aragon given by Alison Weir.tumba ca

I was not sure what  to expect as Katharine has always seen the cause of religious separation from the Catholic world in England. Having heard a lot about Alison Weir but having never read her books, nor followed her on the media, I knew only that she was a well-known English historian.

What a talk!

Alison’s narration and story-telling techniques, as well as her deep knowledge about the early Tudor times transported us to the times of Kathari ne of Aragon. We learnt how tough this Spanish lady was and how ruthless Henry VIII was to her. She did not manage to meet her only living child, Mary, for the last years of her life.

Alison WeirKatharine knew her role in life, and in her last letter to her husband, written on her death-bed, she wrote, Dear husband, and signed it, the Queen of England. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/letter5.html

Alison is very erudite on the subject of Henry VIII and her way of presenting the topic made me realise how much more I would like to learn about Katharine of Aragon. We are thinking of organising a tour where Alison can tell us more. Thank you to everyone who came on the trip and shared this experience with us.