My experience in Spain
was an amazing one. I learned about another culture that I really loved, as
well as a lot about my own life here. Having never had a long visit (more than a
week) to another country and not having another culture as part of my family life
in America, my life and culture in America was the standard I had for how life
was. By being able to visit another country for such a long period of time, I
was able to see a whole new way of life and mindset that other people have,
which really helped me understand the way of life in America better as well.
Going to Spain, I didn’t really have any cultural shock despite it being so
different from my American life. I really loved it there. Because of this, I
was surprised to have a bit of reverse culture shock when returning to America.
By experiencing another culture, I also was able to better understand parts of
American life that had been normal before. In this way, Spain really opened my
eyes up to a new way of life and how much someone’s environment (like a culture)
can impact them. I also think I really found a love of traveling through my
trip, and even think I would really like to live in another country one day.
Another thing that surprised me was how close neighbors are in Spain (at least
in the neighborhood I stayed in). In America, it does seem like neighbors can
be quite close, however, in my neighborhoods in Spain it seemed like the people
my host family would hang out with on a daily basis were their neighbors, and
they would regularly walk to each other’s houses.
Another thing that
surprised me was how much Spanish I actually knew! I had been learning Spanish
at my school for five years, but I was really worried about not being able to
communicate with my host family because I thought my Spanish was bad
beforehand. However, once actually talking for a few days in Spanish I realized
that my vocabulary was a lot bigger than I thought. My host family also got
pretty good at describing or acting out words I didn’t know. There were also a
good amount of colloquial words/slang that they used a lot, like ‘vale’ or
‘flipa’ that were pretty necessary to learn since they used them a lot. I also
got way better at Spanish after my trip, I think I learned more there than I
could have learned in a classroom. Things like understanding people talking
fast, speaking with a better accent, and slang words are examples of things
that would have been difficult to learn in a classroom.
A normal day at their
house would be sleeping in, maybe baking a cake (bizcocho) for breakfast, making
and eating lunch, hanging out with their neighbors/friends in the afternoon,
maybe taking a nap, then eating dinner at like 10. I was really lucky with my
family because they took two vacations to two different southern coastal cities
in Spain while I was there: one to Marbella and one to Alicante. Because of
this, I didn’t end up staying at their house for that many nights, maybe 5-7
nights total. When on vacation, we would sleep in, have espresso and toast for
breakfast, go to the pool or beach, have a big lunch(we had paella like 4
times), take a shower or nap, then go to the city to walk around and get dinner
from like 9-11.
One thing I was a bit
worried about before going to Spain was food since I’m a vegetarian, but they
had vegetarian food at almost every meal. Some of my favorites were papas
bravas (like french fries with salsa), tortilla (an omelet with potato), churros,
and croquetas (which normally have meat but once I had some mushroom ones). I
also really liked paella, which has seafood which I picked out. They also
always had salad and bread at every meal, so there was always something to
eat.
Overall, I really loved my
trip to Spain and am so glad I went! I would recommend it to anyone who wants a
new cultural experience, wants to have fun, or wants their Spanish to improve!
-Lauren Watt
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