Spanish immersion day: a time of Spanish, immersion, and most importantly, on a day.

What is all this buzz about? How can you get to go? And most importantly, where else do you find students yelling ‘Kotahitanga’?

To answer these questions, we interviewed a few students who went on this Spanishy excursion.

“You’re going to quote me? Alright.”

“I didn’t go.”

“It taught me everything I didn’t know.”

There you have it: five hours in a car screaming AUTOBUSSS (bus) is enough to make this trip truly unforgettable.

As an added bonus, some students and our Profe (teacher) were off sick after the trip, to further feel its effects for another week or so.

I get it, the only way you read this far is because you’re either waiting inside the office for that fourth uniform fitting your mum made you go to, or you’re a mildly concerned parent of the kids who went on this Spanish trip.

Fear not! For, the size 96 pants fit all if worn effectively.

Regarding the trip itself, it’s a brilliant learning experience. To simply put it, until you’ve been to the UC (University of Canterbury) and realised that everybody bar you has studied past continuous verbs, it doesn’t push you to learn the language as much as if you had been sitting beside the one individual who decides it’s funny that you didn’t know about those darn stem changing verbs.

You may notice that I’m writing this in English, and that is for two reasons:

• The majority of readers are not fluent in Español

• No hablo Español

The second point is the most important one; you do not need to know much or even any Spanish to benefit from this trip! I would have had an absolutely brilliant example for this, but they decided that having a sniffle made them exempt from going to university, thank you very much.

The actual events of the day went somewhat like this:

• Arrive

• Realise you’re not actually there yet, as UC is pretty big

• Swap name tags so that you can be with your friends

• Enter lecture theatre w/o a small pamphlet that everyone else has and includes information about the day

• Introduction to Spanish

• Listen to our teacher deliver the Keynote speech

• Leave lecture theatre and take somebody else’s pamphlet in the rush out

• Classes on how to pass and excel in the upcoming assessments (writing). During this time you will be tested by your ability to get on with random people while only knowing how to say ‘What is your name?’ - this was very fun

• Food trucks. Need I say more? Las empanadas fueron muy deliciosas! (The empanadas were delicious!)

• Back to lecture theatre for a massive 200 person kahoot - finish in the top 20s, as well as singing our hearts out to the UC’s flagship Spanish/Māori song ‘Kotahitanga’ (unity)

• Leave for McDonalds

As you can see, it was an absolutely jam-packed day.

So what are you waiting for? Turn up on the day to get shown up for not studying, dragged down by emotions, and thrown sideways on a quick turn of events that is Spanish Immersion day 2024!