New friends and an afternoon at the beach!

Our Global Navigators lived it up this weekend while they enjoyed time with their host families celebrating the famous San Juan Festival here in Alicante. They enjoyed the beautiful sights of the massive creations, witnessed an incredible firework show on the beach and stayed up late to watch the structures be burned at midnight, the most iconic moment of the Hogueras festival. Their weekend was jam packed with activities and late nights so after class on Tuesday we went to the beach to meet some local Spanish teens and enjoy new friendships and sunshine while celebrating linguistic fellowship.

At the beach our navigators spent plenty of time practicing their Spanish with local alicantino teens where they practiced yoga, played intense matches of volleyball, shared their stories of the hogueras and cooled off in the warm mediterranean sea. 

A true hallmark of linguistic immersion is creating connections forged through meaningful communication, in whatever way possible! Some of the ways our students have been able to communicate effectively with their peers and local teens at the beach have been circumlocution, describing a word in an almost around about way in if they can’t remember the specific word, doing a mixture of hand gestures and facial expressions to convey meaning and always laughing and smiling over small mistakes, which is such a natural part of the language learning process! 

It is safe to say that our students have been busy here in Alicante, and now that they have new local friends, they are going to have an even harder time fitting in all the amazing things this coastal city has to offer! They are halfway through the program already and making the most of every single moment.