After sending the same email to multiple people a few times this week, I have decided to make a blog instead! At the moment, this blog will be about my experiences in Toledo, but in the future I may add other content here.

I have been trying to learn Spanish for the past couple of years on and off, partly because my Dad lives in Spain and I visit often, but mainly because I love Spain and the Spanish language and hope to visit the country a lot in the future.

I took Spanish group lessons back in England a long time ago, which gave me a very basic introduction to the language. After about 10 weeks of lessons I knew the very basics of Spanish grammar but couldn't really say anything worthwhile. Much more recently I have had Spanish lessons at my house in Cambridge, but unfortunately my teacher moved to London so I haven't studied here for a while.

Although I have learnt a lot of stuff in England, I have not had much of an opportunity to practice. I think it is impossible to learn a language properly without practising it, and I have also always wanted to experience life living in another country, so I decided the only way to make some more progress was to go on a long "full immersion" Spanish course in Spain!

In order to come here, I had to find a new job, and negotiate a long gap between ending my current job and starting my new one. I have somehow managed to end up with 6 weeks in between jobs, and have decided to come to Spain for 4 weeks.

I looked into a lot of Spanish schools on the internet. I would have loved to study in Andalucia, but their accent is strong and not standard so I crossed all of the schools in southern Spain off of my list. Galicia, Catalunya and the Basque country all have regional languages so I crossed those off of my list too. I avoided Salamanca because there are too many students there (or so I've heard), which left a few places in central Spain to choose from. In the end I went for a school called Aula Toledo, in the city of Toledo, because although it was one of the most expensive of the remaining schools, it had excellent reviews from previous students, and the city was supposed to be very interesting and beautiful. Also the accent in Toledo is very standard and clear.