One of the issues I was warned about before I arrived here in Spain was that my level of English will most likely deteriorate during my time here, especially if I were to live with native speakers and use Spanish more everyday than English. I laughed this off thinking ‘nah that’ll never happen to me, i’ll stay fluent in both languages, easy peasy’… However, I now stand corrected.

This past week has seen a group of English school children from Manchester arrive for a cultural exchange to our school here in Panxón. The main reason for the exchange is so that the English kids can practice Spanish while the Spanish kids practice English, yet what seems to have happened is that the British kids have realised I’m a native English speaker, and so gravitated to me and only speak English, asking me to translate almost everything for them. While at first…