Arcadia Spain

Time sure flies in this winterless Spring semester! Students are enjoying yet another unseasonably warm February and are now ready to decompress after Midterm week!

This February has been quite eventful… Our dear Maria Bascón, who had been our Student Services and Life Support Coordinator for the last three years, went back to her high school teaching career. She'll be missed and she'll remain a friend of Arcadia. In her position is now a Aixa Traoré, an energetic, ambitious and dedicated young woman who's already established great rapport with the students. Her first trip solo (well, not that solo after all) to Sitges, a beautiful seaside town went exceedingly well, we had a great time and beautiful weather!

While many of our students take the opportunity to travel throughout Europe during the weekend, they're also getting to know the city deeper. There's been a flurry of activities lately in the Rags to Riches course: a visit to Roman and medieval Barcelona, a walking tour of key monuments in the Gothic Quarter, Museum of the History of Catalonia: from the defeat of 1714 to the Example and beyond Vila Olímpica to analyze urban planning and its management, Glòries…

In addition, we explored the linguistic landscape of the city, and particular the Raval area, where English, Catalan, Pashtun, Urdu, Arabic are present. What do the signs tell us? Is there codeswitching (writing in two different languages) in signs, ads or graffitti? This was a fun an informative Safari, and I hope it peaked the students' curiosity towards linguistic landscape in the United States (a true paradise for linguists working in this field!).