After talking at the sixth meeting about the traditions of our countries, we were eager to know more about them, so we decided that our next meeting would be to make a presentation about our countries and tell each other interesting things about both cultures.
They were very different presentations as they are countries with very different cultures, but I think we both really learned a lot about both countries.
Although I have never been to the Netherlands, I had a very real sense of what it might be like to live there. Amber told me about the tulips, the windmills, the bikes (I was surprised that they always use the bike, even in rainy or bad weather), and also about how the colour orange represents them, especially in sports tournaments.
In my case, although I had already talked to Amber about the food in Spain, I wanted to emphasise it again, as the Mediterranean diet is something really important in my country. I also told him about the beaches and the fiestas in the different cities. As usual, he was very shocked to learn about the San Fermines (in Pamplona). It is a festival with which there is a lot of controversy because of the animal abuse it involves. This made me think that I don’t like that people only know Spain for bullfighting as it is something that only represents a part of the population.
It is true that we could have talked about all this without making a presentation but it was really interesting to do it this way so that we could also see images. In my case, I had videos prepared and I showed them to Amber so that she could also see the things I was talking about, for example the different traditional dances or how the festivities in my country might be.
In addition to learning about the traditions and culture, we learned new words in the other language and realised that we had made further progress in the pronunciation of phonemes and that it was becoming easier and easier to say words and phrases in the other’s language.
Some of the words we learned were:
– Tradition: Traditie
– Culture: Cultuur
– This is popular in my country: Dit is populair in mijn land…
– Which traditions do you have in your country?: Welke tradities Heber jullie in je land?
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