One Month in Andorra
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2021
THIRD WEEK IN SCHOOL
I’m still loving my position as a conversation assistant at Batxillerat. With one teacher, I finished my conversations with each of the students so I had opportunities to present on art for the first years and human rights for second years, both topics I care deeply and know a lot about. The teacher enjoyed my arts presentation so much that I was asked to present it in other first year classes next week.
My human rights presentation was called “Human Rights: Disasters, Dilemmas, and Dehumanization”. I built the presentation from a series of discussion questions the teacher gave me, that even I found to be difficult: can violations to human rights ever be justified? To what extent should moral viewpoints be equally valued regarding human rights? How can I show awareness of my actions regarding dignity and human rights during my service experiences? How can language impact perspectives on the topic of human rights? Though it’s a complex topic, I was confident the second year students would be capable of understanding because in our group conversations, most of them expressed deep concerns for social issues and the ability to express themselves well on difficult subjects.
LANGUAGE
I’m still adjusting to the language barrier. I definitely get by with my Spanish and French, but I’m still jarred whenever someone comes up to me and starts speaking Catalan and I have no idea what they’re saying initially.
I would say I understand around 30%-40% of spoken Catalan and 50-75% of it written because it is so similar to French and Spanish. It’s right between them! For example, “I” in French is “je” and “yo” in Spanish. In Catalan it’s “jo”.
It’s funny because I’ve had a number of incidents where I understood they were talking about me but I couldn’t say anything to respond. One day in the teachers lounge I was waiting in line for coffee and someone greeted me in Catalan and I just smiled and nodded. Then I understood one teacher saying to another in Catalan, “oh that’s the new lectora, I think she only speaks English” to which the other teacher responded “oh I don’t speak any English”. I just stood there nodding pretending I didn’t understand when really I should have said, actually I speak Spanish and French in Spanish since most people speak it.
Even though I’m in Catalan class for four hours a week, my learning is hindered by the fact that the class is just awful in my opinion. I am not sure I am going to be able to keep up with that, and self-study might be a better option. In the long run, it might be better to focus my energies on improving and maintaining my French and Spanish competencies.
ACTIVITIES
Last Saturday, we had lunch and went for a walk/hike with Betty, an Oxford student who was here for 4 months teaching English and studying Catalan, but who is leaving soon.
Last Sunday, we went skiing at Pal! We were a little disappointed because normally a gondola that takes you from the village of La Massana to the ski resort, but it is closed due to the pandemic. Instead we had to take a cab. Skiing was great, the lift ticket was only 20euro which is a great deal, except most of the resort was closed and there were only 2 lifts running. Still a great time with beautiful views of the Pyrenees mountains.
This past Saturday, I slept in and did some shopping on the magnificent Shopping Mile that is very close to our apartment.
This past Sunday, we took off straight from the apartments and hiked the Cami del Solobre which took about two hours from the apartment to the viewpoint which gave a spectacular view of the valley where you can see most of Andorra La Vella and the surrounding mountains. It rained on and off, but this made for some beautiful rainbows. We lost the trail for a little bit and climbed up a canal. It turns out the trail goes directly behind Andorra´s only penitentiary.
We had beautiful weather yesterday so I took a stroll through the Parc Central, picked up my bus pass, and laid in the sun wishing I had brought a good book to read on these sunny days.
LIFE IN A PANDEMIC
Last week, France announced they will be closing the borders to most non-EU countries and it might be closing the borders to Andorra. The result was that many French people came to Andorra this past weekend to get some shopping and maybe some skiing in before the possible border closure. The shopping mile was crowded and our aparthotel was nearly full! It´s a little ironic that measures to curb the spread the virus likely led to more travel.
