Speakeasy student, Ekaterina, from Siberia, shares her Spanish learning story

What brought you to Barcelona?

Ekaterina came to Barcelona to study Business Administration at EU Business school. She has been living in Barcelona since November 2021. It made sense for her to study Spanish, as she plans to stay here after her university studies, working or taking a master’s degree in Spanish.

Spanish classes at Speakeasy

Currently, she is taking the Super-intensive course for the B1 level. This Spanish course combines the Intensive 20h program from 9.00h – 13.00h (20 hours per week) and the Spanish conversation and business classes from 15.30h – 17.30h (10 hours per week).

Ekaterina’s teachers are Leticia, Xavi, Cristina, and Susana. She says she likes the teaching style, and that it was unexpected for her that all classes from the beginning are completely in Spanish, which is a great advantage. Her favorite activities during class include role plays, describing situations, improvising dialogs, asking each other questions. She likes it very much as it is effective and the whole class participates in the process. Additionally, she likes the games which help with attention and entertainment. Ekaterina finds it interesting that all of her classmates are from around the world, which means you get to learn more about different countries. All of her classmates are all also different ages, which also makes it interesting.

As Ekaterina is a Russian citizen, she needed to get a student visa to stay in the EU. Usually, the process of getting a student visa can be quite long, and you must have a lot of patience to do it. In her case, she says it was very lucky because usually, this process takes about 1-2 months in Russia, and she managed to do it in just 2 weeks!

A day in the life

A typical day for Ekaterina starts at 7:15h when she wakes up and has breakfast in her student residence. She then takes the metro to Speakeasy and has her first class from 9 to 11:50h. They have a small break and then start the second block of class that runs from 11:10-1:00h. After her Intensive class ends, she has lunch somewhere and returns to take the Conversation and business classes from 15:30 -17:30h. After a day full of Spanish leaning, she goes home to her student residence and has dinner. Then, she and her friends play table games, go swimming in the pool or to the gym together.

Activities in Barcelona

You can usually find Ekaterina hanging out at the Barceloneta, as she loves the sea view, or at Plaza España. Also, she and her friends like to walk along the pedestrian area on Diagonal in the Zona Universitaria. She plays volleyball on her business school’s team. She says her team is pretty strong, and she loves all her teammates. In the summer, she usually plays beach volleyball on the Nova Icaria beach. She has joined a few of Speakeasy’s activities, and her favorite so far has been a boat trip with live jazz music along the coast of Barceloneta. Also, she really liked playing beach volleyball with Speakeasy. She says that Sophie, the activities coordinator, is doing her job super well!