THE ENGLISH WEEK IN SANTA SUSANA

The sunrays were reflecting on the windows of the train. After a while seeing the coast, the blue coast, we saw a young Irish man and two beautiful young Irish girls waving their hands: we had finally arrived. We got down the train very quickly and went to meet them; they introduced us to themselves and told us about what we were going to do those days . After that, we walked to the camping site where we were going to stay those days; the camping site was near the train station.

All of us were very pleased and amazed to arrive there and see all the magnificent things that were in there: bungalows right in front of a wonderful beach, table-tennis tables, comfortable public baths with hot-water showers where you would stay hours and hours… and even some curious people like the whale-man. We separated the groups for the bungalows, about 4 people each, and quickly moved into them. Then we made the groups for the activities, about twelve persons each this time, trying to mix them all up with the three different schools: Getafe (Madrid), Fiñana (Almeria) and Montcada i Reixac (Barcelona).

That same day, after having lunch, the monitors took us to the side of the bungalows where we did some activities to meet the other people and the monitors. There were thirty monitors from Ireland who didn´t know Spanish, well… except ‘ah… vale, vale…’ That night we went to the disco, where we saw the monitors dancing on the stage, as we were going to see them every day.

The next day we went to the same place to do some other type of activities. First of all , we did the activity `Monkey see Monkey do´ then they gave us some pictures with which we had to invent a story and explain it to the rest of the group. Most of us, didn’t really like these activities but fortunately, after lunch, we did much better activities, like horse riding, dancing, climbing, archery, target shooting, obstacle race… all them were, in general, the very best of all the activities we did.

At night, after having dinner, we always sat together outside the bungalows and we talked on different topics with the other people until the guard came to warn us that it was time to go to sleep, and then we got into the nearer bungalow and keep talking all night long.

The next day we went to the same place and did the best activities ever such as the orientation activities and, if it hadn’t been for the monitors’ help, most of us would certainly got lost, probably because every group was following the one that was ahead of them, so if the first one got lost, the others too. Anyway, this activity was made for cheaters, because no group could find letter 'F' (the activity consisted on searching letters and discover the hidden word), but as everybody wanted to finish first, all of us cheated in many different and curious ways…

On Thursday, we went to the beach to do different water activities like kayaking and volleyball and everybody enjoyed that morning, some were sunbathing, others were sleeping or just lying on the sand and a few more were having a bath in the fresh water while others were playing volleyball or just watching how people were playing.

We also did a raft building activity which was very funny, maybe because there was no raft that floated more than two seconds without losing half of its pieces or more…

The last day we did some activities only for an hour and then our monitors gave us our certificates and we took photos with them; at that time, some were weeping while others were taking down the messengers addresses of others and some were taking photos with others.

None of us wanted to leave from there. Two monitors accompanied us until the train arrived at the station and then we waved our

hands from the inside of the wagon, tired and sad because that week was a very tiring one but, somehow, we didn’t mind that, because we had enjoyed a lot.

It’s possible that the order of the activities we have talked about is wrong, because we enjoyed them too much that we lost the notion of time, so we can’t remember very well the exact day we did every different activity.

MUNEEB TAHIR & DANIEL GAMEZ 1ST

BAC.