Day: December 29, 2010

Having just watched Les Mis 25 years old, I feel inspired to post some videos from the Spanish version –

Sale el sol (One day more)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o5JeLsvkPs

Sálvalo (Bring him home)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srcVrBvsyS4

Soné una vida (I dreamed a dream)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz9DdvIFg5E&feature=related

And an amazing clip of 17 multi-national Jean Valjean’s singing Can you hear the people sing?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4924xJl38E

In what seems like a past life sometimes when I used to teach Spanish to secondary pupils, we used a text book called Vaya.  Apart from my gripe about their assertion that Spaniards have pets ‘grillos’ on their balconies (yet to meet one!), my other main problem with the book / course was the fact that the pictures looked nothing like what they were supposed to be illustrating, particularly the food.  The ‘churros’ looked like those posh butter curls you get on hoity toity places, and if I showed you the ‘paella’, you’d be hard pressed to identify it.

Not sure why I thought of it today (perhaps I had a nostalgic thought?) but I did, and it reminded me of this marvellous group on Flickr called Comida española which features over 2000 photos of Spanish food.

So much easier to explain ‘chocolate con churros’

or ‘albóndigas en salsa’

or the scale on which paella’s are sometimes cooked

when you have a decent picture to help you!

You can search the group – for example, ‘tapas’ or ‘garbanzos’ or ‘tortilla’

To finish, here’s a picture that might come in useful in the next week or so…

NB watch out for the CC license under which images are shared – some are All rights reserved which means they’re copyright.  Look for CC Attribution Share alike that you can use as long as you say to whom they belong.

PS if anyone has ever met a Spaniard with a pet ‘grillo’ could you please let me know!