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.