Our trip to Casa Antonio

On Thursday, the 16th of February the MYP3 emergent 2 Spanish class went to a restaurant called Casa Antonio with Ms.Laura as part of a Formative assessment in preparation for our Summative assessment. Our unit 3 in Spanish is called ¡La cuenta, por favor! and it is about ordering food at a restaurant and learning about Hispanic traditional food.

During the unit, we learned vocabulary related to food and traditional dishes in Hispanic countries. We practiced our listening skills by listening to different conversations in restaurants and explored the Hispanic cuisine, specially the Spanish one. We learned useful expressions that we can use at a restaurant and we differentiated between formal and informal language. 

We had planned to share some tapas, something very common in Spain, so before the visit, we practiced our communication skills by discussing with each other about what we were going to order. We explored the restaurant’s website and became more familiar with the dishes they offer before we went there. We also did some research about the Spanish cuisine so that we would be able to understand the food and culture which would also make it easier for us to recognize the dishes that are served at the restaurant. 

We left school right before the end of our Swedish lesson and traveled there by bus. We arrived at the restaurant roughly at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. 

When we arrived at the restaurant, the waiter, Antonio led us to our table and handed us the menu. There we ordered gambas (shrimps) , queso manchego (a Spanish cheese), pan de ajo (garlic bread) , patatas fritas (fries) , croquetas (croquettes) and Coca-cola. 

We found a lot of the dishes quite delicious, and thus ordered multiples. We ordered a lot of patatas fritas (fries) because they were delectable as well as the garlic bread, as it proved to be surprisingly popular. The food turned out to taste very good and many of us ended up wanting to go there again. We even danced to the salsa music for fun!

We got to practice the speaking and listening skills that we learned in class in real life, and now we have gained experience at ordering at restaurants in Spanish. This helped us prepare for our upcoming Summative Assessment, but also for communicating with people from other cultures. It was also a nice experience to talk to a native speaker different from our teacher. 

The restaurant itself was lovely, with many different types of cheeses and meats being displayed. The seating was very comfortable, though we all crammed together on two tables so as to not separate the class in half. The lighting and music were very nice.

Overall, we all enjoyed our time in the restaurant. We got to eat very tasty food as well as practice the skills that we had been developing in our Spanish lessons. The restaurant was really nice and so was Antonio. He talked to us in Spanish all the time and even helped us with some words. We would like to do something like this again sometime in the future.