Intercambio

Every Wednesday a group meets here in Alcala at a bar and shares drinks and tapas while practicing English and Spanish. The coordinator at my school told us about it (as she's part of the intercambio group) and invited us to join. I went last night at it was really fun! There were about 15 people there last night, mostly Spanish but about 4 from the US. The group is bilingual and primarily meets to practice their language skills. So every 30min they switch languages. For example, the first 30min everyone speaks in English, then the next 30min everyone speaks in Spanish, & it continues like that throughout the night. Last night I primarily spoke with 3 Spaniards, 2 engineers and one guy in the military. The guy in the military is the one who's currently in charge/runs the group. He was also able to confirm that there is an air base near Alcala, in fact it's between Alcala and Madrid center and was originally built by the US. So I finally was able to confirm that the fighter jet planes that fly overhead extremely loudly everyday are indeed from a nearby airbase. (People tried to justify that we were close to the airport, which we are but those planes definitely aren't going to a commercial airport.) We talked about several topics, but did have a really good conversation about natural vs. unnatural vs. organic foods, so that was really cool! It was a good group and I'm sure that's how I'll spend several Wednesday nights throughout the year!