There isn’t a Spanish equivalent for wow, my host mother tells me, laughing kindly.

Damn, I think. That word comes out of my mouth too many times a day, and I desperately want to try for fluency. Okay has a counterpart in vale, but nothing for wow?

You could say oh, oh, oh with a look of surprise, my host mother suggests.

That isn’t the same, my host brother chimes in, but he even admits there isn’t much of a synonym. I got lucky - both my host mother and brother speak English rather well.

Just say wow, my host mother says. Está bien. There are plenty of English words used in Spain.

But I would rather not. I am a 21-year-old university student trying to legitimize her Spanish degree. I need to speak Spanish, and my host family does force me to speak Spanish (other than wow), and always treats me with gracious, motherly patience as I struggle, stutter and before long spit out some Spanglish cocktail of a sentence.

Happy New Year all, here’s hoping you had a fantastic time over the Christmas break wherever you were and whatever you got up to. Perhaps you spent your holidays quietly with your family, shunning the usual consumerism of the festive season and instead remembering the true meaning of Christmas. More likely though, it was an excuse for a fortnight-long orgy of boozing, bad TV and eating your own weight in turkey and mince pies. Combined with the fact that probably the only exercise you did consisted in dancing on the photocopier at the office Christmas party and/or chasing unsuspecting victims under the mistletoe, those favourite jeans may well be feeling a little tight right now. What to do? Well, forget those silly diets you’ll stick to for all of five minutes and don’t bother with that expensive gym membership you’ll never use, to banish that spare tyre and keep those bingo wings at bay, Bikram yoga is the way forward.

Clock strikes twelve, signalling the beginning of a new year and for most cities across the globe, a killer party.

Seeded teams Spain, Italy and England get favourable draws, while Brazil and Germany look both to have landed in groups of death.

Many enjoy the thrills, chills, blood, and gore that characterize horror movies, but the popular genre has been around for decades. Original plot ideas that genuinely scare are running short. After directing a box office smash, it is difficult to create an equally successful sequel, and Catalan director Jaume Balagueró’s follow up to the 2007 horror hit, [Rec], is no exception.