Serra de Tramuntana

SERRA DE TRAMUNTANA

Hey guys!

We don't know if you have mountains over there in Birmingham, but here we do have them, and they're amazing.

The Serra de Tramuntana (that's the name in Majorcan) is the first thing you'll see from the plane when you come. It's a large mountain range located in the north-west of Mallorca.

Puig Major is, at 1445 meter, the highest mountain and at the top there's a military base, with a radar that controls the whole West-Mediterranean area.

There are also other 1000-meter-high mountains, and as a CAS activity, we're going to climb a few of them. It might seem difficult, but that's what the IB spirit is about.

As the Serra de Tramuntana is a World Heritage Site, it's very well protected. There are many autochthonous animals and plants, such as the “Ferreret” (a unique tiny frog which lives in caves) and the “Àguila Peixetera” (a fishing eagle). It's a very green place, with a lot of pine trees and holm oaks, but unfortunately, in summer, many wildfires devour many square kilometres of wildlife, and the problem is that many of these fires are set intentionally.

These mountains are the perfect place for doing sports like cycling, hiking, parachuting, running and even in winter, when it snows, some people go skiing. Since the weather is nice during the whole year, you can go hiking whenever you want.

We're sure that when you come to Mallorca and visit the Serra de Tramuntana, you'll feel amazed how beautiful it is.

Greetings from Xudong and Jaume.

The Origin of our Lives

Hi guys!

Today we are going to explain you somethings about the history of Mallorca. Mallorca was an important place for the trade in the Mediterranean sea, and everyone was interested in it. Because of that, it has been conquered many times and this is the origin of our multicultural origins: Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans the Byzantines, Muslims and finally Jaume I, the conqueror from the kingdom of Aragon.

Jaume I divided Mallorca between his feudal lords and built many important uildings such as our Cathedral. The Cathedral was built in 1300 were the ancient muslim market was. The first architect was Ponç des Coll, but because it wasn't finished until 1601, it had many different architecs. Isn't that interesting?

In fact, there exist many curious things about our island, guys. Do you want to konw some? Here's a list:

1. Valldemossa is the highest village of the island, it is 420 m high!
2. Fréderic Chopin, the musician, lived during four months in Valldemossa in the winter of 1838.
3. The Castle of Bellver is the only round castle in Europe.
4. Rafa Nadal, the tennis player, is from Manacor, a village on the west coast of the island.

We think our home is a wonderful place to go on vacations, but as you now know we've got a fascinating history. Boys, are you excited to come over? What did you know already about us? Please comment below to let us know!

Hugs from Daniel and Ariadna.

Speed... action... and dive!

Hi my new English friends!

You may think Majorca only offers water-sports and that we all eat coconuts while we dance around the camp fire on the beach. Well, we don't hope that you think so, but we want to talk to you about the enormous range of sports you can do here anyway. 
Of course the activities related to water are obviously quite popular around here because we are surrounded by it. You can find many people practising sports such as swimming, kayaking, sailing or windsurfing in Majorca specially in summer. Surfing, though, isn't that usual here because the waves aren't big enough. So, you might see some amateurs practising, but professionals surfers go to other places like Central American beaches.

A breathtaking activity you can do here is diving. There are a lot of coloured fish in different sizes. Corals appear in any colour you can imagine and the water is normally crystal clear.
The Serra de Tramuntana is our main mountain range, we are very proud of it and a lot of activities on this island are due to its presence, hiking is an example. There are many excursions you can do here, some of this are actually very difficult and well-known like the "Torrent de Pareis".
On the other hand most of us do typical sports like football or tennis. We suppose that like everywhere, football is also very popular in Birmingham. Here anyway, a lot of young people are part of a football club and play matches regularly. Other boys and girls play paddle, tennis, volleyball, basketball, table tennis or do horse riding. Of course there are water-sports competitions too. The most common ones are swimming, waterpolo or sailing events.

So taking all this into account Majorca is a great place to practise sports, don't you think? That's it for today, we hope you learned something new about on fantastic little island and we look forward to showing you some of the things we talked about.

By: Charlotte, Paula and Marga.

Welcome to the Exchange 2017 blog where students in the 1 IB class here in Majorca will tell you all about themselves. They will have to use the different text types we study in class but, apart from that, they are free to express themselves!