Vita NOUVA -summer and new baby

Congatulations to our host Hakan and his wife Yudum on the birth of their daughter, Beliz. What a lovely name. Burak will send a photo for the blog soon.

Our meeting on Saturday was multi-lingual. My daughter Kathryne spoke English and German with Cihangir, and a bit of Turkish, too. İlkay speaks excellent English and came along to speak Spanish. Janine, the facilitator of the Alsancak Spanish café, came along with İlkay and Zeynep (and her parents). Visit Janine's blog (click the link on the sidebar) for the photo and write-up in Spanish. Althouh some Turkish was spoken, there was a lot of discussion about how to learn a language.

As summer is here our last meeting at Vita NOUVA will be in a couple of weeks time. I'll let you know. A BIG THANK YOU to Hakan and Burak, and their staff, for looking after us so well.

The Language Café at the Spring Fair

On 7th May, 2008 a Language Café took place at the annual Spring Fair at Izmir University of Economics. Attendance was disappointing, as was the weather, and this may have been for a number of reasons including the poor weather, other interesting Spring Fair events, classes -and last year was a hard act to follow. However, there were some lovely moments and perhaps next year we can have a "blow up TLC baloons" competition with Başak and Evrim showing us how...

Margareth, our new Brazilian colleague had a chance to speak Portuguese. Thanks are due to Wayne for bringing his strange Brazilian instrumnst again, and to the Portuguese Consulate and colleagues for their support.

Thanks are also due to Tamer from Mehmet Efendi Coffees for providing free Turkish Coffee -and to the coffee girls for serving in the wind and rain.

English is more than grammar...

After a break in the UK I returned to the Vita NOUVA language café on Saturday 19th April. Merve, Emre and Berrin came along and I can't recall what we talked about (!) except it was too hot to play scrabble, and we talked about grammar and pronunciation. So often at school students learn about the grammar of English but can be surprised when they hear English spoken -we stress important words with meaning and the sounds in other words can change. Sometimes a short sentence can sound like one word. Just like Turkish "Neyapacan?"!

The next meetings at Vita NOUVA will be
27th April with Nicolas
3rd May with Nicolas
10th May with Rob

But, check your email and check with each other. I know Nicolas is busy.

Coffee, Tiramisu and Scrabble at Vita NOUVA

On 29th March 2008 the English Language Café met at Vita NOUVA, Bornova. Although some members could not come this week we had a four and a relaxing time. We had coffee (thank you Hakan) and tiramisu (thank you Berrin), and played English Scrabble. For some reason the Englishman came last :-(...

Rob will be a away for the next two Saturdays, but here are our plans for the next two meetings. If there is any special topic you would like to talk about, add your suggestions as a comment below.

The next two meetings:

• 12th April 2008 with Nicolas


• 19th April 2008 with Rob

In Alsancak: Spanish Language Cafe pictures!

Cafe Eylul, 19 january 2008
1st Spanish language cafe in Alsancak,Izmir

















Tapas Bar, 16 February 2008
2nd Spanish language cafe in Alsancak,Izmir
















Cafeteria of Desem, 22nd March 2008
3rd Spanish language cafe in Alsancak,Izmir

Spanish Language Cafe

First of all..Dear Rob, thanks for your invitation to your blog! Nice idea ! :)

Well, about Spanish Language Cafe, it is usually in Alsancak (the ones I arrange) since January of 2008 and it is very nice and enjoyable. The first meeting was in Cafe Eylul with 15 people, the second meeting in Tapas Bar was also with 15 people and the third meeting -last weekend- in the cafeteria of Desem was with 7 people...all of them on Saturday afternoon.

During these meetings in general, as activities we have played cards explaining the images/words of them so the student need to say exactly the word from the card, working vocabulary and also played "Tabu" in Spanish! I might post pictures very soon but you can appreciate them also in my website http://www.vivaele.com/ in Rob's flickr (see the link on the right) page and in facebook in my Spanish general group named VIVA ELE which means Live Spanish as a foreign language! :)

For April there will be a meeting, for more details - soon :)

Saludos , Janine

The Language Café at Vita NOUVA

The third meeting of The Language Café at Vita NOUVA (Bornova Kipa) http://www.sgckahve.com/bornova.htm took place on Saturday March 15th, 2008.

This English language café is taking on an very international feel. Berrin, Işıl, Emre and Merve are Turkish, Yens, who joined the café for the first time, is German and Nicolas is French. We missed Güneş and Taylan (Turkish), and Wojciech (Polish) but I guess they'll join us next week. Hakan and Burak, the owners of café Vita NOUVA both speak French and had a chat with both Nicolas and Yens in Fench. Yens is also learning Spanish so it was good for him and Merve to meet and greet each other in Spanish. Merve is learning Spanish too and is a regular at Janine's Spanish language café in Alsancak, Izmir. The best part of the afternoon was when Rob slipped away to do the weekend shopping and the language café carried on in English without him! Next week Rob will be unable to go to the language café but everyone has agreed to go anyway which is brilliant.