Day 27 - "Graduation"

Today was the last day of my Galician language and culture class. We had a small ceremony at 12:00 for all of the 88 participants. The members of the Real Academia Galega were in attendance and each gave a speech regarding the pride that the program brings to the Galego community. After that they presented each student with a certificate of aptitude and a diploma of attendance. I have officially "passed" Galego I. If I wanted to attend the program a second time they would put me in the next level.



We signed Galego flags for our instructors
as a Thank You for all they did

To be honest I am pleased and impressed with the amount that I learned over the past four weeks and would especially like to that my instructors Eduard and Rosa. While Eduard had the job of teaching us the more academic and perhaps a little drier subject of theory, we wouldn't have been able to survive Rosa's class without knowing what he taught us. And Rosa's class just reinforced what we had learned with Eduard and showed us that we could, albeit with various errors, speak Galego.



Celebrating our accomplishments

It was a really great experience and I had the opportunity to meet many people from many different countries. Many of us had in common the fact that we spoke Spanish/Castellano before we came, but not all of us, and so it was Galego that kept us talking to each other. It may have been a sort of "Castelego" or mix of the two languages, but it was a great way to practice. Alina and Marina and I would keep each other in check making occasional corrections so we could improve. I would say that one of the things that got us often when we were speaking was using "y" for "and" instead of "e" in Galego.

My Galego certainly isn't perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than it was a month ago and my experience in this country is something I could get nowhere else. I wouldn't trade it for anything. And a final thanks to Shawn for supporting me throughout this trip. It was strange to be without him for a month and I can't wait to see him tomorrow!