Ciclo Formativo Bilingüe/Bilingual Program ciclobilingue@gmail.com

Turkey Day

2011-12-12T01:18:00.000+01:00

As many may know, and for those that do not, Thursday, November 24th was Thanksgiving Day in the United States. After Christmas, it may be the biggest holiday of the year. The day is always celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November and it is an extended weekend for many people as the following Friday is also part of the holiday. Thanksgiving is a time of year when, as the name would suggest, people get together and give their thanks and appreciation for the things in their lives. It is also a time of year when people travel from all corners of the country to see family, some that they have not seen for a very long time. This year in Hurtado de Mendoza we had our own Thanksgiving celebration. We saw two brief presentations about the origins of the day and also read an interesting article about the "other side" of the day and learned a bit about what the holiday means to the Indigenous people of America. In addition, the two groups combined to make two "Thanks Turkeys" and shared with each other the things that they are thankful for in their lives.
The celebration was topped off with an authentic Thanksgiving meal prepared by members of the school's superb culinary program. We started with an outstanding Waldorf salad with freshly-sliced apples and a delicious creamy dressing. After the salad we were presented with dishes full of all the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. We enjoyed two types of mashed potatoes (regular and sweet), stuffing with a Spanish twist, sweet cranberry sauce, a very rich gravy and, of course, turkey. The turkey was cooked to perfection, not too dry with loads of flavor, and all of the food was amazing. The meal was ended with a plate of pies that included pumpkin, pecan, lemon, and chocolate. By the time everyone had finished eating, the looks of fullness and content that are so familiar on this day in houses throughout the United States could be seen on everyone.
On a personal note, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite American customs and it is always a bit difficult to be so far away from friends and family during the holidays, however thanks to the hard work of Antonio, Teresa, and the kitchen staff of Hurtado de Mendoza, it felt a little more like home this year. Thank you!

Welcome 2011-2012

2011-11-17T00:20:00.000+01:00

Hello to All! The 2011-2012 Bilingual School Year is upon on us and charging full steam ahead. This will be the first year with both a 1st and 2nd year group of students and the bilingual team is very excited to be working with so many students. All of them have shown a genuine interest in improving their level of English and many have already made great strides in their advancement of the language. We're looking forward to having an exciting year full of excursions, celebrations and, of course, English!

Getting their make-up on

In fact, the students have already gone on a few excursions (which will be written about in the upcoming days) and we recently had a great Halloween celebration for the second year in a row. The students turned the Multi-Use Room into the perfect setting for a Halloween party by putting up some excellent decorations and added some personal flair with some outstanding costumes. There were sightings of, among others, an authentic Freddy Kreuger, some very creative garbage bag Jack-O-Lanterns, an intimidating Werewolf, a few witches and the usual assortment of zombies. This is the second year I've been very impressed with the zeal the students have shown in celebrating this holiday that seems to be gaining more and more popularity here in Spain.

Lorena & José: Marketing Presenters

The actual celebration was filled with a variety of different activities. We started the party with a marketing presentation about the economics of Halloween in America. The presentation was given in English by two second-year students, Lorena and José, and was very informative and interesting. Following this presentation, we were entertained by a few scary Halloween short stories. These were delivered by Jesús from the first-year group and Víctor from second-year. Both presenters played the role of storyteller to a T and all were very entertained. The day concluded with a repeat of last year's Taboo game, but this time bigger and better. We had four teams, instead of the two we had last year, and held a mini-tournament. After all the clues were given and all the Halloween terms guessed, Los Pestazos, a team of first- and second-year students, was the last one standing as the now-reigning bilingual Taboo champions.

Víctor and Carmen

Jesús

Víctor

First-Years

This year's bilingual group

Overall, it was another very successful Halloween celebration put on by the students of the Bilingual Tour Guide Program. We had a number of other groups of students stop by the party throughout the day to watch the various presentations and it was a great way to kick of the Halloween weekend...oh yeah, and of course we had a showing of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. Next up, our first annual Thanksgiving Dinner.

FITUR- International Tourism Fair, Madrid

2011-02-08T14:36:00.000+01:00

Recently a group of students from the bilingual program had the chance to go to Madrid for three days and attend FITUR, one of the biggest international tourism fairs in all of Europe. The trip was a great experience for the students as they received a very in-depth look at the tourism industry. They spoke with representatives from countries all over the world and were exposed to many new areas of tourism, as well as the direction tourism is heading in the future. In addition to the fair, the group had a guided excursion to the nearby town of Toledo. The following are summaries of the trip written by two of the bilingual students.

By Víctor Pérez

For me, visiting FITUR was an excelent experience. It was a great opportunity to see how the hospitality and travel industry works, from the kindess of the staff members of IFEMA to the professionalism (and curious language) of the executives looking for and doing business with each other. There were also specific places in FITUR for new segments of tourism like Green Tourism and LGBT Tourism (Lesbian Gay Bi and Transexual) and new destinations like Croatia, Latvia and Lithuania in Europe or Myanmar (formerly Burma) in Asia. These were great examples of how dynamic this industry is. Some stands (and websites) that I found interesting are:

- Turijobs, www.turijobs.com, an internet company to find job in tourism.

- Aept, www.aept.org, the Spanish Association of Tourism Professionals with interesting information for tourism studients.

- Unwto, www.unwto.org, the World Tourism Organization. Dates, general information and keys on the hospitality and travel industry.

-Fepet, www.fepet.blogspot.com, the Spanish Federation of Tourism Journalists and Writers.

By Carmen Humanes Velasco

On Friday, we took a day-trip to Toledo. First, we had a guided bus tour of the town and learned about some monuments such as various town doors like “The Sun Door”. The bus then dropped us off in the historic center of town and we were given another guided tour where we saw monuments such as the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes, El Alcázar, El Puente de Alcántara and La Catedral. In the afternoon, we ate lunch and had some free time to explore the city on our own. My favorite parts of Toledo were the wonderful views, the medieval monuments, the peaceful ambience and the excellent food. Although one thing I have to advise is if you go to Toledo in winter, DON’T FORGET YOUR COAT!

Happy New Year

2011-01-06T18:00:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year! As we head into 2011 I'd like to give a brief update on the bilingual program. The students' English level continues to improve and we are gearing up for an increase in the percentage of each class that will be taught in English. The students have also been working on their first all-English presentation to be given in Pilar's Protocol class. The students were split into 6 groups, then paired with another group. Each pair of groups has been preparing a skit to represent a different business-tourism situation (i.e. a retirement dinner for a hotel-chain manager, a business deal between a tour-guide company and a travel agency, and organizing a familiarization trip for a foreign country). The presentation will be given during the first few weeks after we return from the holiday break and I'm very excited to see the final product.

The #1 tour guide in all of Granada, Rafa

The students also had the opportunity to be taken on a very informative tour of the barrio Albaycin the week before vacation started. The tour guide was Hurtado de Mendoza's own Rafa García and he led the group through the cobblestone, hilly streets and back alleys of the area. A couple of the highlights were a stop at the Centro de Agua and the always picture perfect El Mirador de San Nicolas. It was a perfect winter day in Granada, a bit chilly but with plenty of sun, and the trip ended with some tapas in a nice little plaza near the mirador.

Prof. Juan w/ some of the students before the tour

I hope everyone had a relaxing few weeks off and a great start to 2011!

Memoria de Andalucía

2010-11-29T10:57:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago the Bilingual group took an afternoon trip to the nearby Memoria de Andalucía, located inside Centro Cultural CajaGranada. The weather was spectacular and we had a nice walk to the museum before being led on a guided tour of the museum. The tour was interesting and informative as the group was put into teams and participated in a educational Scavenger Hunt. They had the opportunity to use the new, innovative interactive audiovisual exhibits and discover much about Andalucía's rich and diverse cultural history through these and the other various installations the museum has. Above all, the group was shown a good example of how to give a tour and how to treat a tour group.

Bilingual Halloween Party

2010-10-31T14:38:00.009+01:00

The bilingual students had a very SPIRITED Halloween party last Friday. They brought in a lot of great decorations and turned room AG1 into what would have been a great start to a haunted house, complete with spider webs, ghosts, pumpkins, and Jack-o-Lanterns. After all of the decorations were up one of the students, Maika, gave the class an excellent presentation, in English, about the autonomous region of Cantabria. We learned about some of the mythology that surrounds the region, as well as what natural attractions the region has, among other things. After the presentation, the students took a short break to get into their costumes, which mostly consisted of some very impressive and detailed Zombie make-up. We then played an intense game of Halloween Taboo in which The Skeletons edged The Monsters by a mere 1/2 point, despite the protests of The Monsters.

With Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video and a presentation about the craziness of Halloween marketing mixed into the day, I think the Halloween party could be considered a success. Next year, we're hoping to make the celebration much bigger!

Let me show you the Albayzín. El club de las ideas

2010-10-23T15:05:00.002+02:00

Just click and enjoy the video!

Welcome to 2010

2010-10-11T10:53:00.000+02:00

Hi all and welcome to the 2010/11 bilingual school year!

I would like to take the time in this first post to introduce myself. My name is David Whiteside and I will be the English Assistant at C.P.I.F.P. Hurtado de Mendoza this school year. I am from Los Gatos, CA, which is a small town in the South Bay Area about 40 minutes south of San Francisco and 15 minutes east of the Santa Cruz coast. After a two-year absence, I am very excited to be living in Granda again and to have been placed at Hurtado de Mendoza. This year's group of bilingual students seem to be very eager to continue their learning of English and I am looking forward to assisting them with this task. The individual levels of the language varies throughout the class, but it will be fun to watch as their linguistic ability, comprehension, and overall mastery of the language improves throughout the year, regardless of the starting level.

Good luck to all!

Finishing up our Bilingual Guide of the Albyzin

2010-05-25T13:56:00.002+02:00

Hello Everyone!
These last weeks of school have been busy for students and teachers alike. In spite of the hard work, it has been rewarding to see the fruits of our labor in the bilingual group! In AGG especially these last weeks have been very exciting. The bilingual guide is near finished and has been designed beautifully. For the guide, each student wrote about an aspect or area of the Albyzin in Spanish and English. Their writing drew on our guided tours of the Albyzin, books and materials covered in class as well as through independent research.

I would like to include a sample of one students work,

'Romantic Granada' by Elisabeth Martinez Romera

In the nineteenth century many came to Granada; distinguished travelers, romantic writers and artists from around the world, captivated by its oriental draw. The city is presented as the last bastion of Muslim influence in Europe. Attracting prestigious writers and artists such as Richard Ford, Alexander Dumas, and Washington Irving.

But of all, he whom most impacted the city, which conducted the first advertising campaign abroad and thus facilitated the arrival of more passengers and travelers, was without a doubt, the American writer Washington Irving.

He was born in New York and he imagined small stories of the Moors and Christians reading Spanish novels of the sixteenth century. Washington Irving was a known writer in America. He cared about other things, for he had a restless spirit. He traveled. Thanks to his travels, he came to Spain, whose story had intrigued him since long before he learned Spanish and lived as one of us. Although he came under the pretext of writing a story about Christopher Columbus and settled for a while in Seville, Granada was the city that fascinated him most. He came along with his nephew and a friend, Prince Dolgoruky. In 1829, he dared to live in the middle of the Alhambra, monuments left in his great hand, but saved for him by the governor.

The Alhambra was then a place frequented by beggars, for invalids of wars past, the very common paupers of nineteenth-century Granada. Irving, with his demeanor of gentleman, observed the life of the "Sons of the Alhambra", a title reserved for those born in the enclosure alhambreño. They often hunted swallows using flies for bait to feed their empty stomachs. During this time, the wretched old woman Reina Coquina, told him stories as did the crazy colonel who lived in the Puerta del Vino. He found these characters or 'sons' of the Alhambra to be delightfully human.

In his wandering through the halls of the Alhambra Irving found vandalism of Byron and Victor Hugo engraved on the walls that centuries before had delicately been decorated by Andalusian builders. Seeing this as unacceptable and encouraged by his friend the prince, he emerged with an idea that would be totally innovative, creating a signature book in which visitors could leave their signature.

Among the magnificent rooms, which were then goat shelter or Gypsies, came his most famous book, Tales of the Alhambra. It not only collected legends that became world famous, but reflected (perhaps with some imagination) the state it was in the city and the exhibition Nazari. It was the era of big tours the grand tour was called the rich intellectuals who roamed the exotic world under the pretext of learning to live. Travel guides texts were claimed, so Tales of the Alhambra, which was half a guide, half-dazzled fantastic story for these travelers, who saw in Spain a wild country, with its bandits and all, but at the same time offering the political stability of Europe.

Irving was the first to arrive to Spain and then followed such renowned characters as Mérimée (author of Carmen), Théophile Gautier (creator of The Mummy's novel), Alexander Dumas, (father of The Three Musketeers) or Hans Christian Andersen (idolized writer of children's stories). There were many more, of course, but these are all familiar.

Every traveler will appreciate one aspect of our country, if your climate, if your landscape, if their wives, if his Oriental appeal ... but Irving was set on something else, went beyond all cliché, delved into the roots of our past and our most remote discovered folklore, our legends and all of them won most original creativity inventing fantastic stories that are now seen as an extremely modern depiction and capture the attention of a public.

Irving's great contribution was to imagine elves living in the rooms where Boabdil did. With an oddly American wit dissociated the Alhambra in its most archaic Oriental style to make it romantic and pure, savage or primitive features that others thought they saw in Andalusian culture in later years. Something special about this monument of Granada is still studying it, from every perspective and those forgotten. So it is said that it is able to speak, which is not surprising, then epigraphy is in all its walls.

But one day, having become the sultan of that paradise, Irving had to go. It had been named Secretary of American Legation, a position that required him to return to the real world. The exile of his paradise was hard. Irving said these words to leave the palace: "Never in my life I lived a more delicious than this and I can never find another one like it." He never returned to the Alhambra.

Years later, he returned as his country's ambassador to Spain and lived in Madrid. Not even his long walks in El Retiro helped him forget Granada. This decision-to not set foot in Granada, he was widely criticized in Spain, for there were those who interpreted the absence of Paradise alhambreño contempt of oblivion. We now know that it was not. And in a real romance the lover always remains in ones memory.

Romantic Travelers in Granada
Romantic Travelers was issued in the Alhambra unknown and forgotten. It left the witness to the writers, painters and photographers who, with their descriptions, kept alive the image of the monument. Alongside archaeologists and teachers, whom have proved to be the guardians of the Alhambra.

I would like to take this opportunity to give a warm thanks to all the students and teachers who have made this year a wonderful one. Congratulations. I will miss you all!

Group begins Albayzin Guide

2010-03-03T13:23:00.001+01:00

On Thursday the 18th of February the bilingual students received a guided visit of the Albayzin. In spite of the rain, the excitement of seeing a guide in action served as a great starting point to the writing of their own original work.
Since the visit, the class has worked on an original bilingual guide of the Albayzin under the direction Beatriz Pérez Ruiz, María Jesus Becerra with the help of language assistant Emily Campbell. They have defined the main goal of the project as to enrich and contribute to the knowledge of the cultural heritage of Granada’s Albayzin.
There are currently many school’s interested in receiving the guide. Once it has been written and published in both English and Spanish the students will be presenting it to a group of local bilingual students.
We will keep you updated as the project develops!

Successful First Run of San Jeronimo Monastery Guide

2010-01-29T20:37:00.002+01:00

Last Monday the bilingual group had their first experience as guides, at the San Jeronimo Monastery here in Granada. The route was written by the students under the direction of teachers Beatriz Pérez Ruiz, María Jesus Becerra and language assistant Emily Campbell.

The day started off with a visit to the Woman's Cultural Center Mariana Pineda. There, we were shown an educational video on the life of Mariana Pineda and given time to explore the exhibit. After our time there we split into three groups and began the guide! The students did a nice job delivering the route which started in front of the Cathedral and led to and then through the San Jeronimo Monastery. All the students delivered it in English. Throughout the guided tour, Beatriz went around to each group filming the students delivering their portions.

Content with our first run, this week in class we reviewed the video. We found many things which can be improved upon, such as English pronunciation and intonation as well as the body language and the personal style each student brings as a guide. Through the video, the students were able to see their own weaknesses and strengths and learn from one another’s. This was an excellent and educational start and we look forward to seeing the students grow in confidence and skill as the year goes on.

New Year, New Challenges

2010-01-09T08:00:00.004+01:00

Dear friends:
Many things have happened since our last post! The program is expanding with more subjects and contents in English.
This year´s new group is getting on and we are all very excited about this second year of our program.
We have already visited the Alhambra and we are getting ready for visiting FITUR 2010 in a few days!
Stay tune because updates are coming soon!

The bilingual guide is getting on!

2009-04-04T16:04:00.004+02:00

Bilingual Tour Guiding

2009-03-19T10:02:00.005+01:00

Hello Everyone! These last weeks have been exciting for the bilingual group and I would like to share with you what has been happening.

Two Sundays ago the group met to walk to the Fuente del Avellano here in Granada. Beatriz Pérez Ruiz is leading the effort to create a bilingual guide of the route that the students will then be able to give to those interested. It was perfect weather, as the students took notes for the guide they are writing of the route. Since then, the students have begun to write the guide in Spanish and will later translate it to English together in class. We are hoping to publish it as well.

Last week the bilingual group was able to participate in the Vocational/ Trades Fair. We were giving out information, talking to interested students and parents as well as playing some games related to travel and tourist destinations. We continue to advertise as the pre- sign in date comes closer. Please remember:
The pre-sign in to enroll for next year will be from June 1st-25th!

Thanks!

2009: Back to Bilingual Business

2009-01-20T12:46:00.003+01:00

Hello everyone and happy new year! Before going into what we have to look forward to in 2009, I would like to take a minute and share with you our experiences thus far.
This past fall was an exciting season for the bilingual program. Our students made a great transition into the bilingual classroom, as we were working roughly 30% of the curriculum in English. As the language assistant, it has been very rewarding to see the students improving their comprehension and growing in confidence with the English language. In Rafael Pérez Sarmiento´s class, ¨Destinations¨, the students prepared research presentations about an autonomous community in Spain. The presentations were given in English.
We have also had some nice field trips to get out and experience the tourism industry first hand. The first trip was to the Alhambra here in Granada. We had a very knowledgeable English speaking tour guide. From her, the students were able to see a tour guide in action and get some advice on working in the tourism industry. Our second trip to ¨Palacio de los Córdova¨, was also here in Granada. The bilingual presentation helped to build on the students’ now growing knowledge of the history of Granada and Andalusia. The most recent trip, taken only a week ago, was to the Interpretation Center in Sacromonte and a walking tour of the Albyzin. These trips have been great opportunities to learn about the many tourism activities available in Granada.
In December we said goodbye, temporarily, to Rafael García Cebrián. This semester he is in Liverpool, England on a grant. We wish him lots of luck and look forward to having him back next year, with a perfect British accent of course! Isidro García Azor has taken over the teaching of his classes.
The rest of this year should prove exciting. As everyone gets more comfortable with the bilingual program we are upping the classes to 60% in English. Stay tuned to our blog and we will keep you in the loop as the year goes on. Thanks!

UPDATES ARE COMING UP SOON! STAY TUNED!

2008-12-11T10:44:00.002+01:00

Dear friends: Many things have happened since the last post, we are back at the permanent location, we have Emily as our current language Assistant, and the most important matter, the Bilingual Group is getting on. We are preparing new things for this year, please stay tuned!