Day 4 The mountain and the marina

Another day at Spanish school, and students are seen here practising the noble art of ping pong.
While seemingly quite sedate it was originally the official martial art of El Cid and his loyal soldiers. Today for safety reasons the ping pong bats are blunted and 'to the death' tournaments are strictly forbidden within all Spanish language schools, despite these stringent measures last year in Spain alone, up to 4 people recieved bruises while playing, 2 people suffered chaffing to their hands, and a budgerigar in Seville got knocked of his perch.

After language school students relaxed in a streetside cafe.

we next headed to the cable car station and prepared to scale Mt Calamorro, did somebody shout Jazz hands?

Some of the breath taking views on the climb up the mountain.

Once at the top students spend time sight seeing and taking in the views.

A few brave souls join me on a Geocache mission, we find nothing but I like to think the students found something more important with in themselves, other than the intense dislike for a teacher leading them on a wild goose chase.

After our adventures in the mountains we descended to the marina, its combination of hi class boutiques such as Poundland, Lidl and Crazy Pancho's burger shack have long made it the place to be seen in Benalmadina.

Mrs K reenacts for students the story of how she dealt with the spanish shopkeeper who tried over charging her for a bag of skips.

The Marina is a chance to add some glamour to the Spanish trip. The luxury apartments nestled amongst the masts and sails of the boats serve as holiday get-aways for the worlds elite. The top people in world buisness and entertainment are known to own properties here, megastars like Les Dennis, Turkey king Bernard Matthews and the ginger woman who played Duffy in Casualty are often seen in the area.

Due to popular request, School trip fashionista Maxwell Rutherford talks us through his fashion choices for this season.

Also by popular parental demand, a run down of the day..

Day 3 Language school and the beach

We know what your thinking as you look through these photos of sun kissed Spain, your under the false impression that the Spanish trip is all about the fun things in life, like ice cream, cable car rides and burying members of staff in sand.
While we do cram the fun times in, we also make sure that the students are being educated to within an inch of their short lives.

So as soon as the flaming ball was in the sky we headed on up the hill to the Spanish language school.

Lessons at the Spanish school are diverse and indepth and cover not just the Spanish language but also give an insight into the culture. The bull fighting lessons proved especially popular with year 8 who managed to survive the whole session without any major goring incidents.

After school we headed to the cable car station so we could head up into the mountains, sadly high winds meant that it was closed. We will try again tomorrow.

Because we now had some extra time on our hands it was decided that a trip to the beach was in order.

On the way Mrs Gallimore revealed to staff and students the extent of her handbag obsession (26 handbags is too much handbag for any one human surely) and we have recieved complaints from several street handbag sellers about her constant harrasment of them in her never ending search for a better gucci knock off.

Once on the beach students wowed all and sundry with their gymnastic skills and in some cases rather frightening aerial ability. Who would have thought that the majesty and awe of the red arrows flying team could be so closely recreated by a bunch of 12 year olds sugared up to the eye balls on fanta and fizzy cola bottles?

The beach visit ended with with a round of the strange ball game that involves alot of running round and falling over.

the game came to an unfortunate end with the near entombing of a staff member. I do feel slightly responsible for the whole sorry buisness to be honest.

From my experience it takes ages for an average teenager to complete any task they are asked to do, and will often involve multiple requests before the job is half heartedly begun. So who knew that when I innocently joked that we should bury Miss Kattach that the whole of year 11 would respond so quickly.

If any family or friends of students have requested to see particular individuals, keep watching for the next few posts where I will do my best to get the students you want on the blog.

Mr R

Day 2 Granada

After a much needed nights rest, students woke up to their first full day of Spanish living. to get us all in the mood we decided to do the traditional british pass time while in a foreign land of invading something, so all piling into the NK funbus we headed across to Granada to see the ancient Moor citadel the Alhambra.



Alhambra comes from the arabic word Al-hamra which means `the red one´ its full name al-Qal'at al-hamra translates as `the red fortress´. The Alhambra served as a citadel for the Moorish rulers of Granada and southern Spain or Al-Andalus as it was known at the time.



Below we have students arriving at the Alhambra, its extensive gardens cover much of the south east hillside of Granada and date back to the 14 century when famed Moor garden expert



Al-Antitchmarsh visited the area.

Students wander and frolic through the ancient paths and byways of the ancient citadel, surrounded by elaborate water features and stunning views on all sides students stay focused on their number one goal of finding the old lady who sells monster munch .

After getting past the guards we where into the citadel, In the pictures below notice the expressions on the students faces as they soak up the culture of over 500 years, we can only guess what is floating through their minds at a time like this, most likely one of the bigger questions like what is the meaning of life or should i have got another packet of cheetos when I had the chance.

Below we have several of the scenes from the Alhambra, you will notice ny developing camera technique of lying in wait for the students with my camera before leaping upon them like a milk float bearing down on a pensioner.

After the Alhambra, students and staff hurried down into Granada, the promise of cheap kebabs and scarf shops filled us all with a heavy sense of expectation, for you the families at home it means that your either getting a scarf or a half eaten doner as a holiday present.

One of the main influences noticeable in Granada is the Morrocan markets which are found in side alleys. If your lucky enough not to end up with a mouldy kebab this is where your scarf most likely came from.


After shopping we all headed to a nearby cafe to have some chocolate and churros. Churros is a spanish doughnut, however rather than a ring shape, churros comes in a stick like form, to add to this cardiac arrest inducing taste sensation you also get a cup of thick hot chocolate to dunk it into. The cafe futboll offers a reasonable deal of 3 free heart jump starts from owner Miquel Santos's Bedford Rascal's starter motor for every 10 plates of churros bought.



Chocolate and churros offers the chance to catch the students in the process of forcing several hundred weight of fried dough into their mouths, enjoy.

Day 1 Travelling to Spain and the unconscious pleasures of air travel.

Day 1
We arrived relatively safely in Spain, I say relatively safely as I had a bit of a funny turn and passed out. I took a few minutes of a student prodding my slumped body for them to realise that I wasn’t my usual topical self. To cut a long story short, I am alive and managed to be resuscitated by Pablo and Manuela the Hospital Puerto tag team resus squad. I also managed to score a free packet of shortbread and a bottle of coke from Easy jet which I’m sure you’ll agree is a pretty fair deal considering what stingewads low cost airlines are these days.


After a long all night plane journey we decided the best course of action was to head straight for a theme park, so ignoring the hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation I headed off to tivoli world with the students, staff and kenneth the giant pink rhino that I'd been chatting to since we landed.



here we have beaming students gleefully preparing to join the cue to Southern Spain's answer to Sundown adventure land









Here we see a cue that we spent about an hour in after being told we could get a free german sausage hot dog. With images of a Bismark sized bratwurst in mind we were happy to weather the lengthy queue time under the merciless eyes of the cruel spanish sun. I wonder if the local Spaniards noticed the tomato faced sun crisped teacher crying as he walked away with the half inch frankfurter in a bun while muttering about trade descriptions to his imaginary Rhino friend.












Yaaaaayyyyy dodgems, or more the more accurately named 'smash-them-till-their-fillings-fall-out-ems'





take one student add a gallon of fizzy drink and 3 bags of jelly tots and shake vigourously leave to simmer for 15 minutes then watch as they quizzically report that they have a tummy ache and don't know why.

Carmageddon

Its a well known fact that all NK students fear nothing , We decided to put this to the test by taking any student brave enough through the Passage of terror!

like a young Roger Moore in the Saint I adopt my most heroic pose and prepare to set the thrillometer to 11

Our first two heroes

Mrs Gallimore is cold as ice, check out the Stare on that folks.

the mysteriously familiar Mr Logan prepares to join the fray. His bobby Charlton style comb over mocks the forces of darkness.

Max the masher Rutherford leads us all to safety. he's like a 4 foot 3 version of Bear Grylls a real minature man's man, and boy can he sprint when a spanish man in a rubber mask wielding a chainsaw is behind him.

students pile onto another vomit inducing fairground ride, its always fun to see your dinner twice if you enjoyed it.

Happy tired students after a day or edutainment and teacher related medical emergencies

And that in a nutshell was our first day. buckle yourself in for more Spanish awesomosity.