Where I come from is what I am.

In this post I'm going to speak about my roots, where I come from and how that has affected my way of life or even who I am.

I live in a small city in the North of Spain called León. I've lived in León for all my life but my parents come from a village near León, in the countryside. I want to speak something about my experiences in the countryside because this has made me a little bit different than the other people of my age. I'm not a country girl (even if my friends usually say I'm posh) but I've always liked being in the village with my grandparents and sometimes help them with the tasks. That has given me a different point of view of the things we consume, because, like my grandma says "nowadays children think that the milk appears at the supermarket magically".

(This is the village where my grandparents live, there's less than 200 people living here)

Talking about León the first idea that comes to my mind is “León is a city with a village soul”, I cannot remember where I read this sentence but it's totally the truth. León is considered a city because of the population, although in the way we live, León is still a village.

I can imagine you don't understand what I'm speaking about, but after reading the main features of my city you will know what I mean with these words. In León you know all, or almost all, the people (maybe you don't know somebody but you have sometimes heard about him or her because he or she is a friend (or even family) of one of your friends). The other thing I can say about León is that it's a really safe city (of course sometimes bad things happen but normally you shouldn't worry). So I've grown up in a place with all the facilities of a city (hospital, cinema, shopping centers etc) but the security and advantages of a village.

León has also a lot of tourist attractions, not only the monuments (the cathedral, many churches, the Roman wall....) but also the cultural events like Easter. In Spain there are a lot of religious processions at Easter, but Leon is one of the best known.

My Finnish experiences.

Well, after having my blog for a week I think it's time to introduce myself. My name is Elena, I'm 16 (near being 17, but still 16) I'm from Leon a small city in the north of Spain. I'm an exchanged student in Finland for three months, well actually just two, because the first month has passed incredibly fast.

The day I left Spain I thought three months was a really long time but now I know it's not time enough for enjoy well all the new experiences. Living out of your country is being learning all the day, even the all day things are made in differents way and everything is new and something for enjoy. Sometimes shocking but always constructive.

After being here for a month I have realised that there are a lot of diferences between our cultures but you can learn fast them, and live as in your own country. For me the bigest difference is that people is really shy and there's almost any noise, Spain is really noisy and people speaks each other all the time no mattering if you don't know the people you are speaking with. But all this differences make you learn and adaptate to new situations and new ways of life and I think this makes you more open minded.

The thing I love the most about Finland is the landscape, everything is rounded by trees and forest. You live in the city center and walking ten minutes you can be in the middle of the nature. Finland is the land of the lakes and this is also amazing for me because in Spain, or at least in the part I live, there's no natural lakes or this kind of places.

I started this blog as a project for my English lessons but it can also be usefull to write down my experiences as an exchange student and I hope you enjoy reading it.

My English learning story.

1.The beginnings.

I started to learn English when I was 4 or 5 five years old. We had a native teacher and she told us that we had to teach her because she didn't speak Spanish, so this way we learnt the basics like, “hello, how are you?” or some simply words like mother, father, dress or school. We also acted the Pretty ritty,the Charles Perrault's story about a small rat who wants to get married.

When I was a bit older we learnt vocabulary by singing songs, I still remember some of them and it was really useful.

I have always been one of the best in my English class although I wasn't able to speak or write well.

My improvement started when I began to go to some extra English classes, I was in a small group and the teacher was a native speaker so we were really into the language.

2.Start using the language.

With these extra classes I felt more comfortable speaking English and I really thought I was able to speak or write quite well. I started to listen to music in English and I felt frustrated because I didn't understand the lyrics. So I started to listen to more music and read the lyrics to learn more vocabulary and this way I began who to use all I had studied.

Sometimes I spoke with my brother in English at home and we discussed how to pronounce some words or how to use the tenses, and that also helped me.

3.English and me nowadays.

Two years ago I was on exchange in Ireland for a week and an Irish girl was living in my house for a week. It was really the moment I started to speak in English and be braver. Since this moment I have used English almost like the Spanish. I have been working in a Comenius program in my school and now I'm staying in Finland for three months so I need English for speaking with everybody.

Right now English is my first language.