- June 19, 2010, Saturday
- I wasn't supposed to attend this event mainly because of another event in the evening. I wanted to rest myself, so I wouldn't be tired and sweaty before changing to my evening attire. However, Karla, one of my co-interns and now classmate in two subjects, texted me last night that she would be going, and that she was looking for someone to accompany her to El Dia Espanol (El Dia E.) I agreed to accompany her, given that I would be at home around 4pm, so I can ready myself for the evening event.
- I arrived at Insituto around 1 in the afternoon, and saw old co-workers, as well as the other Atenean interns. As the name of the event suggests, the whole day was dedicated to celebrate the Spanish language. Word games were scattered everywhere, including the Juego del Espanol, which was like scrabble, but people would have cubes of letters (one letter on each face of the cube) instead of flat squares with letters like in the normal scrabble.
- I bought two t-shirts and roamed around with Karla, occasionally hanging out in the office because of the aircon. Haha. She bought a shirt too (only to find out hours later that she left the shirt she bought in Instituto. Haha. Hope she gets it soon.) We were able to write stuff on the walls as well. The walls of the Instituto had certain portions where people could write on them (I'm guessing it was wall paper.) Characters were drawn on those areas with speech bubbles, and we were supposed to write something in Spanish. In return, we get to grab 2 magnets with Spanish words each time we write on the walls. Cool huh. I was able to collect all 8 kinds of magnets. Hahahaha.
- The food sold there was great too. One stall sold pasta, rice toppings, and cakes that could be bought per slice or the whole thing. As time went on, the prices became lower and lower. Imagine, a slice of cake worth 150php in the morning was priced at 80php around 1pm, then 40php around 2pm, and finally. 20php per slice (and 200 for a whole cake) around 2:30pm. Haha.
- The finale of the event was the last round of the Juego del Espanol. The elimination rounds used small game boards and took place inside the classrooms since morning. The final round however, took place on the vacant area in the ground floor. This time, the board was now a big mat laid on the floor, and instead of cubes that had sides around a centimeter long during the elimination, the cubes for the final round had sides that were around 3/4 of a foot long. The winner of the contest would win an all expense paid trip to Andalucia, Spain around late September to early October.
- Although the people were packing up, such as the hired performers who performed in the morning (as most events took place in the morning) the area where the Juego del Espanol took place was jam packed with people. Some, like us, even watched from the second floor.
- After a long and hard-fought battle, the winner of the Juego del Espanol was surprisingly a girl who was in level 1. "Entonces, no importa la nivel!!" the host said after awarding the girl. It means "So, the level is not important." People can actually know that she has a light background in Spanish after not understanding/answering the Director's questions properly in Spanish. Still, she did beat someone who was already in level 11. Haha. We later found out that the girl who won had studied Spanish for only three weeks. Impressive, no??
- Although I was hurrying back home after the giant scrabble finals, I must say that I did not regret going to El Dia Espanol. A big part of the whole event might have happened in the morning, while I was still happily having an adventure in Dreamland, I didn't miss out on some things as well, like meeting my former co-interns and co-workers.
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