- July 2018 -

From Language Exchange

to...

Ava... what?!

 

4 years ago, I started with Language Exchange Nijmegen. Why? After having spent a couple of months in Spain and returning back home, I started to look for native Spanish speakers to keep on practicing my basic Spanish. However, I couldn't find any events in my city that were providing these kind of meetups. Therefore, I decided to start a meeting by myself, not just for Spanish, but for all the languages that people were interested in. Around 20 people showed up! I was amazed and that night I couldn't sleep because of all the good energy that was still running through my veins. Soon the meetings took place on a weekly basis and now - four years later - the meetings still continue: thanks to the amazing team! Not only people from around Nijmegen are interested in the meetings, but we got requests from other cities as well. Now it's time for Language Exchange Nijmegen to grow.

 

As a Cultural Anthropologist, I have always been interested in different cultures. All different cultures come together in the meetings, but of course not only cultures - also people and languages. My curiosity for my own native language (Dutch) started to grow and I decided to follow the Postgraduate of Didactics in Dutch as a Foreign Language at the University of Antwerp. I graduated and now I am a certified Dutch teacher. Since a year, I'm teaching Dutch to migrants in an interesting neighbourhood (de Schilderswijk) in The Hague.

 

I have been dreaming about it for a long time, but now is the right time to take action! Language Exchange will be AvaLingua Exchange from now on. The concept will stay the same and together with the team I will keep striving for improvements - as we always do. The only thing that will change is the name and our expansion to other cities. Next to that, I'm a Dutch teacher at AvaLingua, based in Rotterdam. My vision of teaching Dutch: intensive and interactive classes with a lot of possibilities to practice outside the classroom.

 

Since I started with Language Exchange, people started to call me Ava. A nickname that no one had ever used before - and believe me, with my non-typical Dutch name, I have had a lot of nicknames in my life. That's why the name Ava is related to all my language activities. I just combined my name with the Latin word for language (lingua) and then we get: AvaLingua.

 

Language Exchange started as a small initiative, but now it turned out that we are going to make it something bigger. To end this blog, I would like to thank you for your engagement in AvaLingua and AvaLingua Exchange. It's one big adventure for me which I embrace with a lot of enthusiasm! I'm more than happy to see you at one of the AvaLingua Exchange meetings or during a Dutch course at AvaLingua.

 

Love,

Avalon

and the Team