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I have a secret… Spelling doesn’t come naturally to native English speakers. In fact, I divide the world into two camps: those who can spell and those who struggle. There are people who can confidently write “definitely”… and then there are the rest of us — the ones who Google it every time or wait for the spell checker to jump in and save the day. I don’t love admitting this, especially since I’m not only an English teacher but the director of an English academy. Still, truth be told — I’m firmly in the latter camp. Now that I’ve confessed my spelling sins, let me explain. Lambert, a DarKha student, practicing his English writing! Photo by Darcie Khanukayev In the United States, formal schooling begins at age five. Of course, we learn the alphabet — along with the sounds of each letter and common letter groups. For example, our curious little minds would practice saying the letter “A” with five different sounds… one of which was silent. We’d nod our heads in rhythm to the alphabet song, trying to keep track. Same with all the vowels (most of them have at least five sounds!), and then on to consonants and combos like sh, ch, and tion. By age six, we started weekly spelling tests. Every Monday, we’d receive a list of 20 words, and the grand finale would come on Friday — a dictation from the teacher. Now, I loved to write, jump, twirl, read, explore, ponder, and make mud pies. But spelling? Spelling was just plain ridiculous. Pure memorized nonsense. Take this example: eight, the number, and ate, the past-tense verb. They’re spelled completely differently but pronounced exactly the same! My mom would say, “Sound it out.” What?! I’d scream (in my head). I may have been six, but I wasn’t stupid. When you “sound them out,” neither one sounds like “eit.” So, my weekends were spent writing out eight twenty times, and ate twenty more — which left less time to build the secret fort where my friends and I were crafting an entire language for our Dragon Kingdom. I was getting more and more frustrated with this spelling imposition. Then came Spanish class. And suddenly… the rules made sense. Letters made one sound, not five. Words were written exactly the way they were said. No hidden letters, no silent k, no sneaky gh pretending to be an f. ¡Milagro! The spelling felt like a friendly handshake: clear, consistent, trustworthy. So here’s what Spanish speakers need to understand: English can’t be trusted — not like your familiar, rule-following Spanish. It will betray you. And yes, you might go through a resentment phase, just like I did. But at least now, in this modern world, you have spell checkers. I sure didn’t.

Join us on Sunday, March 30, for a fun and adventurous bilingual bike ride! 🌿🚲       DarKha Bilingual Biking!! 📍 Meeting point: DarKha Academy, Sant Domènec, 32 ⏰ Time: 10:00 AM 🧢 What to bring: Water, helmet, and your adventurous spirit!  We'll be exploring the scenic area around Mount Puig between Genovés and Xàtiva, enjoying the fresh air, great company, and bilingual conversation along the way.  All levels welcome! Let’s ride, chat, and immerse ourselves in language and nature. 🌍🌞 👉 RSVP now and join the ride! 🚴‍♀️

🎄✨ Christmas is coming… and so is the DarKha Christmas Club! 🎁🎉 Looking for magic, language, and a little morning peace? Join us for two festive weeks of fun, creativity, and bilingual adventure at the academy in Xàtiva! 🧒👧 From 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., we’ll keep your little ones engaged with hands-on fun in English and Spanish — while you enjoy a well-earned morning break. ☕🎶 Join the Christmas Club!!  🎁 What’s in Santa’s sack this year? 🍪 Whipping up winter treats & hot chocolate 🔬 Cool experiments with a holiday twist 🎁 Making magical, heartfelt gifts 📚 Singing, storytelling & seasonal cheer 🎉 Excursions and sweet surprises! 📍 Where: DarKha Academy, Sant Doménec 32, Xàtiva 📅 When: Week 1: December 23, 24, 26, 29   Week 2: December 30, 31 & January 2, 5 🌟 Why sign up? ✨ Daily immersion in English & Spanish ✨ Real, fun, screen-free learning ✨ A warm, creative environment ✨ And yes — 4 peaceful hours just for you every morning! 🙌 🎟️ Spots are limited – don’t wait to reserve! Let’s make this Christmas bilingual, brilliant, and full of heart. ❤️

Thursday, November 21 🕖 7:00 PM📍 DarKha Academy – Carrer Sant Domènec, 32 💶 Bring 3€ for supplies. 🥧 And bring something to share with the group! Come cook, laugh, and connect in English & Spanish while  learning about the heartwarming American tradition of Thanksgiving! 🇺🇸❤️🗣 Practice your language skills in a fun, real-life setting 🌍 Celebrate culture, friendship, and gratitude 🎉 Friends are welcome – the more, the merrier! 📝 RSVP (685 166 339) please! Learning English and learning to cook!!

As a kid in California, I thought olives were... fine. Nothing special. They came in two varieties: black, with barely any flavor, or green and stuffed with pimientos. That was it. They tasted like the jar — flat, timid, and bland. We put them on pizza and... well, I can’t think of much else. Olives from my garden. Photo by D. Khanukayev Sure, olive trees grew in California. I loved their silvery-green leaves and gnarled bark, ancient and wise. But their fruit? Always a disappointment. I never would have guessed that, in another part of the world, these same trees were producing thriving divas. Then I visited Spain. My first real olive encounter was in sweltering Sevilla. We’d sat down at an outdoor café for a drink, and when the waitress set our glasses on the table, she also delivered a small plate of curious, round things — black, green, even purple. Intriguing, I thought, as I reached for one. Stefan, my California friend, was a step ahead. “Wow,” he blurted out, mid-chew, “these olives are gourmet!” I sniffed mine suspiciously. “Tangy, yet bitter! Zesty and fresh!” he continued, eyes wide. “The olives back home have been processed to a flavorless death.” I cautiously took a bite. Firm, pungent with vinegar, bold and unapologetic — they were alive. Even as I continued my cautious tasting, I felt slightly overpowered, like they were challenging me to continue. Over time — and over many rounds of cold drinks with their little olive sidekicks — I tasted more varieties. Green, black, wrinkled, crunchy, bitter, herbal, marinated with orange peel, garlic, or pimentón. I came to realize that California olives had been tamed into pitless, lifeless, flavorless black balls. Spanish olives, on the other hand, had been cultivated to be wild, brave, and fully expressive — flaunting their eccentric traits with no apologies. Here, olives are deep tradition, nearly sacred. They're a birthright, a ritual, a way of life. The contrast? It's like the cows grazing peacefully along Route 66 versus the fierce-eyed fighting bulls of Andalusia. Same species — completely different beasts. And in this case, fruit. It is now early November, and I see those olive trees drooping with little black fruits, and I want to get involved! Friends and families are heading to the fields, baskets in hand. They showed me the tradition of shaking the branches to harvest them. To Spaniards, it’s their heritage. I now have cultivated a deep respect of the Spanish olive; it’s a symbol of rootedness, resilience, and flavor that refuses to be flattened. ¡Olé

November 16, W e are hiking🚶🏻‍♀️to La Ermita en el Puig .🥾 It’s an  emblematic hermitage of Xàtiva very close to the urban center. Meet at the academy at 10 with water, snack for a 3 hour easy/medium excursion (about 8 km on roads and up a the hill on well trod paths). La Ermita en el Puig .

Ready to switch stories? 💫 We’re putting Don Quijote back on the shelf (for now 😉) and diving into a captivating, slightly eerie, and beautifully written short story collection: 🕊️ “ Birds in the Mouth ” by Samanta Schweblin. 🔁 As always, it’s our DarKha Special Bilingual Book Club — where language learners and literature lovers meet to share, laugh, and practice Spanish & English in a relaxed, thoughtful space. 🗓️ Get a copy of book in PDFs in both Spanish and English at the DarKha Wed site!

🧶✨ BILINGUAL ADULT COMMUNITY NIGHT ✨🧶 Friday, October 24 at 7:00 PM📍 DarKha Academy – Carrer Sant Domènec, 32. We’re going to knit in two languages! Yes, really. Whether you’re a seasoned stitcher or don’t know a knitting needle from a spoon — you’re welcome! 🧶 We’ve got supplies, 👜 but We’re going to knit in two languages! feel free to bring your own.🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️ We’re looking for: Knitters and non-knitters;  English and/or Spanish speakers; People who love to laugh, learn, and share. 🎁 Bring a friend and something tasty to share 🍪🥖🧀 Come ready to tangle some yarn and untangle your languages!

September came and went in a flurried frenzy! It's easy to compare its arrival to waking up from a dream with a bucket of cold water thrown on your sun-soaked, August body. Darcie on her 42 day of walking El Camino de Levante… looking about the same as last weekend. Photo by Camino friend, Katrina. Here at the academy, September is our month of coordinating and accommodating: matching parents with afterschool schedules filled with sports, music, dance… and of course, English! Lives are modified, groups are formed and tweaked, alliances made and broken — all because of fencing class. It's glorious madness. And then comes October. Everything begins to settle. I sneak in a deep breath. But just as I started to exhale… I got sick. Like really sick. Vomiting-all-night sick. Head-pounding, stomach-churning, blanket-on-the-couch, staggering-to-the-bathroom kind of sick. Since I couldn’t watch Netflix, read, or even scroll, I had no choice but to reflect. And I started thinking about how differently illness is handled in Spain vs. the U.S. Here in Spain, taking time off to rest is normal. There’s no shame in it. Health care? Covered. Sick days? Expected. In the U.S.? Not so much. Deep down, I felt like a failure for being ill— I was wasting a whole day, for heaven’s sake. In the U.S., we treat illness like an inconvenience or even a weakness. In Spain, it's a condition — and you are told, with full conviction: “¡ Quédate en casa! ” (Stay home!) Just then, Leti, my Spanish friend called to check in on me.  “ ¿Qué tal? ¿Estás constipada ?”, she asked. Now, I knew she meant "Do you have a cold?", but for us English speakers, that sounded like quite the personal question! For the record, I was neither constipada  nor constipated. In fact, things were… moving rather efficiently in both directions, thank you very much. Definitely not a common cold — this was a full-blown virus. We laughed about the mix-up, and it made me think: the words we use — and how we treat illness — reflect our cultural values. In Spain, getting sick is part of being human. In the U.S., it can feel like you're doing something wrong. Maybe the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle — a little Spanish-style rest, a little American-style grit... and ideally, no mistranslations in the bathroom department.

When your friends “help” by setting your library on fire… for your own good, of course. Don Quijote's Cure! Ah yes, the legendary Chapter 6… when everyone decides the best way to “cure” Don Quixote is to burn down his entire library. 📚🔥 While our would-be knight sleeps peacefully, dreaming of glorious adventures, the village priest and barber stage a full-on medieval intervention. They team up with the housekeeper and niece, grab some lanterns, and sneak into the library like they’re part of CSI: La Mancha. 🕵️‍♂️📖 One by one, they examine his chivalry books with the seriousness of a courtroom jury… but the gleefulness of people about to toss everything into a fire. If a book seems harmless, it stays (under lock and key); if it shows the slightest sign of having fried Don Quixote’s brain… off to the flames it goes! ⚔️🧠 They end up building a massive bonfire in the courtyard and turn the whole collection into a smoky cloud of literary madness. When Don Quixote finally wakes up… his beloved library has mysteriously vanished, and he’s left scratching his head in confusion. 🤷‍♂️ It’s like an episode of Marie Kondo, but with more fire, cassocks, and the smell of scorched leather. 🧙‍♂️🔥 💭 Fun Book Club Discussion Questions If you had to “clean out” your own library, which books would you save from the flames? 📚 Do you think books can actually drive us mad… or just make us wonderfully creative? 😉 What would have happened if Don Quixote had Netflix instead of chivalry novels? 📺 Were the priest and barber responsible heroes… or total literary party-poopers? 😅 Which modern books would send Don Quixote spinning into another round of adventures? 🤓

The smoke is white! The world has a new pope. Being from California, Catholicism is just one of many religions woven into our cultural fabric. The United States was founded on the principle of separating church and state. But that doesn’t mean we don’t mourn the passing of Pope Francis or celebrate the legacy of his predecessor. Like the rest of the world, I waited, wondering which path the Church would take next: one rooted in classic tradition, or one moving toward inclusion, transparency, and compassion. My first surprise was that the wait wasn’t long. Cardinal Robert Prevost emerged and took the name Pope Leo XIV. My second surprise? He was a fellow American! It’s not that I didn’t think it could happen—it’s that the possibility had simply never crossed my mind. Then came the shock. Reality set in as I tuned into one of his first public appearances. We’re used to popes speaking Latin, Italian, Spanish—languages that feel as much a part of the papal identity as the robes and mitre. But then came the unexpected: Pope Leo addressed the crowd in a native American accent. Of course I knew he was American, but hearing English—spoken with that unmistakably American tone—against the backdrop of Vatican formality was disorienting. Like hearing the Statue of Liberty speak—not in solemn, stony silence, but with the warm, familiar voice of someone ordering coffee at a diner. It was surreal—yet somehow, intriguingly comforting. Then came another surprise: his full homily was later delivered in fluent Spanish. What?! A Chicagoan speaking Spanish? A Californian, sure—that’s expected. But the Midwest? In that moment, I knew—we had a unique and cool pope. A multilingual, multicultural leader from a country not exactly known for either. As I began to adjust to these surprises, his actual pope-ing came into focus. He spoke on behalf of the poor, advocated for unity and peace, and bridging divides within the Church and with world. He supported the use of AI and technology that promotes human dignity and creativity, rather than manipulation and eroding personal freedoms. And then, there was a moment I won’t forget: In a symbolic act, he removed his papal ring for a moment and kissed a child’s worn backpack. It was quiet, unscripted, and deeply moving. For me, it was a message: This pope may speak many tongues and come from unexpected lands—but more importantly, he listens. I understand now that tradition and transformation don’t have to clash. We can all shake hands.

Get ready—Chapter 5 is where Don Quijote comes limping home after his ‘epic’ battle, still convinced he’s a knight… even though he’s riding on a farmer’s donkey instead of his noble steed. It’s basically Cervantes inventing the medieval version of expectation vs. reality memes. So, our “valiant knight” Don Quijote has just been beaten up by some muleteers (big surprise). He’s lying half-dead in a field, when a kind farmer from his village finds him. Instead of proudly declaring his real name, Don Quijote insists (in true delusional fashion) on being called Valdovinos (a hero from an old ballad). Yes, he’s still roleplaying while bleeding. The poor farmer, trying to make sense of this nonsense, loads Don Quijote onto his donkey (not a noble steed, but hey, it works) and drags him home. Along the way, Don Quijote keeps reciting dramatic ballads like he’s auditioning for a medieval talent show, while the farmer just wants to get him patched up. Back at the village, everyone rushes out—his housekeeper, niece, and friends. They’re horrified at his condition but even more horrified when he starts ranting about knights, giants, and his “adventures.” Meanwhile, the priest and barber realize they really need to get rid of his library before these stories literally kill him. So, the chapter ends with Don Quijote bandaged up in bed, still convinced he’s a knight of legend, while the villagers quietly plot a “book-burning intervention.” 🔥📚 The Beginning of the Book Burning! To conclude, Don Quijote may be battered and bandaged, but his imagination is still undefeated. Maybe the real question is: are we laughing at him… or recognizing a little of ourselves in his wild daydreams? ✨ These are some of the comic relief points:  Contrasts Don Quijote’s epic self-image vs. the very un-epic reality (on a donkey, not Rocinante).  Farmer’s exasperation = comic relief.  Sets up the famous book-burning scene in the next chapter. Some questions we can go over in our "Special Book club": 1. The Epic vs. the Reality    Don Quijote imagines himself as a legendary knight… while riding home beat-up on a farmer’s donkey. 😂    👉 What’s the funniest “expectation vs. reality” moment you’ve ever had in your own life? 2. The Farmer’s Patience    The farmer listens to Don Quijote’s dramatic ballads while just trying to get him home in one piece.    👉 If you were the farmer, would you play along with his fantasy—or tell him to snap out of it? 3. The Dangerous Library    The chapter ends with villagers plotting to burn Don Quijote’s books.    👉 If your friends staged a “book-burning intervention” for you, which genre would they confiscate first? (Be honest! 📚🔥)