Values

The biggest impact Spain had on me was through my entire outlook on life. Before living there, I took a lot of things for granted, like my family and my friends. I never realized how much they meant to me and how much I need them in my life. By seeing the relations between the Spaniards and their loved ones I learned about how lucky I am to have my family play a big role in my life and I am so much more grateful for that now. I also learned the value of culture and how much it shapes our lives. American culture is very fast-paced, overwhelming, and at times fake. Here, we get what we want, when we want it, and by whatever means available. I Spain, it is the complete opposite in that they learn to live with and love what they have, and if they want something more they will work very hard for it. I also learned how to truly appreciate the history of our culture and why it is so important to who we are as a nation today. The actions, and sometimes lack of action, by the people who have come before us have changed the way we live and surviveThe places I have lived, the people I have met, and the things I have done are what shapes me as a person and because of Spain I have learned how to be truly appreciative of all that I have.

History

I have found that one of the things that I enjoyed the most about Spain was how full of history it is. Every city we visited had some part of it, some story to tell, that went all the way back hundreds of years. No matter where we went was the feeling of a nation deeply rooted in all the things that happened before them, because it shapes who they are as a culture today. The period of time that had most obviously affected them was the reign of Franco during the middle of the twentieth century. France was a dictator that controlled the lives of Spaniards in all aspects. Franco changed the way they ate, dressed, celebrated, etc.; he made up their minds for them. After he died, Spaniards were able to live again which contributes a lot to their outlook on life and how they are happy enough to just be.History also plays a big part of their lives in the form of paintings. Artists like Picasso, Goya and Velazquez all originated from Spain and have had a serious impact in Spanish culture. Not only are their countless, famous art museums throughout Spain, but the style of each different artist are represented in other forms like parks and buildings. A specific example of this is the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona designed by Gaudi. This church was given such intricate designs that it after many years of building it has yet to be complete. It is things like the work of Gaudi and his fellow artist that Spaniards pride themselves in and boast about wherever you go.

Forever Friends

Second to the closeness of families come friendships. To them, friends are their second family and they would likewise do anything for each other. There was not a day that went by that my senora didn’t have a friend stop by for coffee and a chat or went out for the afternoon to spend time with another. I also experienced the value of friendships in other ways. Although, most of the people I spent time with were not from Spain, I think we adopted their ideas of being open to everyone and that we are all there to enjoy ourselves so there is no point in being angry or upset. I even remember one of our teachers saying on the first day of class that she was there to teach about her country and her language, but she was also there to be a friend and a positive part of our experiences. Spaniards are known for being “party people” who spend little time at work and a lot of time at fiestas. But more than that, I think that they have their priorities straight because they would prefer to be out with their friends, socializing and meeting new people. People think that they don’t take life as seriously as the rest of us, but I think it’s the other way around. They realize that they have only one life to live so it is very important to cherish the things that you have and to enjoy everything to the fullest.

Family Matters

Spaniards and their families have very close relationships. They are often so close that in some cases children don’t move out of their homes until they are in their late twenties and are getting ready to be married. Another example of their tight-knit relationships is that whether it is 10 o’clock in the morning or 10 o’clock at night, you will always see young families out and about with their children and babies. I think this speaks a lot about their relationships. There are very few cases where a child is not cared for by either their parents or by grandparents or other close relatives. There are few nurseries in the city of Salamanca and any outside care isn’t used until it is time to begin socializing with other children their age at pre-school. Also, most weekends, and occasionally weekdays, are spent with family at get-togethers and other functions. The parents of my Senora would make a 4 hour trip every other weekend just to spend a few hours with their family. I saw this as true love and dedication, because I know a lot of people back home that hardly see their grandparents that much even if they live right down the road from them. Also, my Senora would be sure to spend time, even if it was short, with her girls every day to catch up and make sure they are doing okay. These close families account for the way Spaniards look at life. Family comes first to them before all else, and they will do anything for each other.

La Comida

The food in Spain was a drastic change for me. Spain eats mainly a Mediterranean diet, consisting of a lot of fish, vegetables and bread with every meal. Breakfast usually consisted of light things like toast or crackers with tea or coffee. I was used to the traditional full American breakfast of things like eggs, bacon, pancakes, and fruit that my mom cooked for my family every day. However, the light meal worked for them because lunch was the biggest meal of the day. At around 2:00 p.m., the family would all reunite at home for a large, multi-portioned meal. The meal was honestly enough for a whole army, but it was more about the fact that they were all taking time out of their day to be together as a family. The final meal of the day was served around 9:00 p.m. and was almost always some type of seafood. My favorite meal was paella because it was so fresh and traditional to this culture. While eating fish everyday is not something I would go back to, it is what worked for their culture. For them, meat is for the most part very expensive and fish is often the cheapest, and freshest, option for them to eat. However, they do have a large influence of the American styles of eating. No matter where you go you can’t escape the McDonald’s, the Burger King’s and the KFC’s. Also, even in nice restaurants they serve things like hamburgers, chicken nuggets, and French fries. It’s hard to believe that even a culture so rich in culture and tradition are enamored by American foods.

Nightlife

The nightlife in Salamanca was by far the best part of the whole experience. Being a university town, Salamanca was crawling with students all around my age and almost every night there was something going on. For the most part the people I went out with spoke English; but, where ever we went we would have to speak in Spanish to order things or to be friendly with people. Each night quickly became full of social networking with people from all over the world. I found that for the most part the people who were from the U.S. were college juniors studying abroad and they were always shocked when I explained that I was just a freshman. Lucky for me, in European countries it is very popular to take a year off after high school before you go to college, which meant that I had other people my age to hang out with. It was cool to hang out with so many new people from all different backgrounds because everyone brought something new to the table. At any given moment, there was a new joke to tell, a new game to play, or a new trick to try which kept us all on our toes. I soon found that every night out I became more and more outgoing and more and more independent. I came into the whole experience with the idea that I would try to branch out a lot more than I normally would because I really didn’t have much to lose since I would only be there for a few months. I think that going out and meeting new people each night made me become the mentality more like the guys I encountered on my first nights out in Madrid.

Language Barrier

La Universidad de Salamanca was my first college experience ever, and my 5 years of Spanish classes previous to this had not prepared me for what was to come. I had three classes, 4 hours, every week day of nothing but Spanish. The first few days this was really hard because I could understand almost everything, but it was hard for me to respond comfortably in anything but the present tense. However, I soon realized that being force to speak perfect Spanish everyday was the best way to become fluent. These classes were a lot different from anything I had ever been in before. It was a new style of teaching where the teacher acted more like a friend you were having lunch with than someone just lecturing you. Every day we had a new topic or tense to learn, but it never felt too hard or overwhelming because the classes felt so comfortable and the teachers were so friendly and helpful. Another big difference was that all the students in the class all came from different countries, all speaking different languages. This made the class a lot more interesting on many levels. Firstly, it allowed us to learn about other cultures and social norms in places other than just Spain. This also meant that everyone’s common denominator was that we spoke Spanish, which meant we had to speak it all the more because it was the only way we could understand each other. I found that having complete immersion into a language was the best way to learn and fully understand it. When you have no choice but to speak a language it’s hard to not become good at it.

Host Family

The one of the first, and biggest, challenges I was faced with was having to live with a new family who had their own customs and rituals and on top of it all, spoke only Spanish. At the Salamanca train station I was picked up by my host mom who was young, fashionable and spoke a mile a minute. I was by no means ready for the new living situation that I was about to encounter. I would be living in an apartment with a family who all seemed to live separate lives. I grew up in a house, with a lawn and woods, and my family is very close. My host mother did not work, but attended English class twice a week along with cooking and cleaning the entire house every day. She had two teenage daughters that wanted nothing to do with me at first because I didn’t speak Spanish perfectly. That was one of the biggest disappointments because I was hoping before I came that we would be close and bond a lot like I had done when I had a foreign exchange student live with me. The father was a bus driver who worked all afternoon, as well as, early morning and then slept during the hours that I was at home, so we never really talked. Like I said, my host mother cleaned the house every single day, which included cleaning my bathroom and making my bed basically as soon as I got out of this. Because of this, I always felt like a guest at a hotel and was never comfortable the way I am at my own home. All though this was not the situation I had initial hoped for, I quickly learned that not all places are going to be just like your own home, however that lifestyle works for them.

¡Hola Guapa!

Getting off the plane the first day in Spain, I unknowingly stepped into what would be the greatest adventure of my life so far. Over the next few months I would learn about how to adapt to a new environment, how to be accepting of a new style of living, and to be open to many new customs. One of the first things that I realized was that with my blonde hair and green eyes, I was far from fitting in to the Spanish norm of dark hair and dark eyes. Also, along the same lines, I was not going to get away or be able to hide my features from the Spanish men. My first night out in Spain, I learned a lot about what are acceptable manners. Walking down the street my first night out with my new group of other American students, we were instantly shouted at with words like “guapa” and “rubia” followed by other profane comments. This was my first major culture shock. I had never in my life been talked to like this and had people think that it was acceptable behavior. However I would soon learn that this was a lot more innocent than what I took it for. The Spanish guys were a lot more outgoing than any one I had ever met in America. They were very confident and not afraid of being turned down. This was a nice change for me because it was much easier to get to know people because they basically did all the work for you.

Studying abroad as a Freshman

Being accepted as a January freshman to Wheaton College meant that I need to come up with something to occupy myself with for the whole first semester, from September to December. I found a program on the internet called Academic Studies Abroad, and through this program I attended la Universidad de Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Before this experience I had never been away from my family or my home for more than three weeks, and here I was a girl who just turned 18 going out to explore the world all on my own.
This experience turned out to be one of the greatest things in my life. I lived with a Spanish family in an apartment and attended four hours of class every day. Also, because I went alone, I had to remember what it was like to make friends and how to figure people out to see if they were the kind of people I needed in my life. I was also able to do a lot of traveling while I was over there, seeing almost all of Spain, and some of Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Austria.
This experience basically taught me to grow up and how to be independent. I had to make all my decisions, which means I did make some mistakes, but I was able to learn from them. In this blog I hope to encourage others to not only have the experience of living abroad, or in any new place for that matter, but to realize what it really means to be independent.