Spain Community Service and Three Cultures

Each student has a unique and individual experience on their Experiment program. The following essay is a single glimpse into a program from one student's perspective.

Elizabeth Benjamin

Spain: Multicultural Spain Through Community Service (ESCS)

The Language Exchange It all started with a hot dog. In the first week of my home-stay I was tentatively tiptoeing around my host family. After the initial nervous introductions, I was still unsure of how to interact with them. I had already begun berating myself for verbal mistakes and vocabulary mix-ups. I was sure that I looked like a fool; awkwardly standing around while my family was working. On one particularly busy night, preparing dinner, my host sister, Rocio, asked me to help her prepare the salchichas. I agreed readily, feeling grateful that I was going to be of some use. In the next second, I realized that I had no idea what I just agreed to prepare. To add to the difficulty of understanding the Andaluz accent, all I could recognize were meshed "s" and "c" sounds. After asking her to repeat herself twice and receiving some chuckles from my amused host mother, I finally figured out that salchichas meant "hot dogs". In exchange for her help, I told her the English definition of the word. Thus, a tradition was born.

On every night of my home-stay, my family and I had dinner on their patio. The beautiful weather and clear twinkle of the stars allowed us to relax around one another. Although we still had our vocabulary mix-ups, our conservations improved steadily. Naturally, while eating, the topic of food came up. Every night I would ask for the name of one dish or food and I would in turn teach my family the English translations. A myriad of words came up: plum (ciruela), watermelon (sandía), sunflower oil (aceite de girasol) and many more. These words provided a learning experience for both families. I didn't realize, however, that our game would give me a greater understanding of my own language as well.

After one particularly lazy, hazy day, my host family decided to invite other family members to dinner. Little did I know that the additional members would include four cousins and two sets of aunts and uncles. After preparing the feast, we sat down to a mix of comfortable chatter and easy silences. All of a sudden, Rocio held up a cucumber and asked me what the word was in English. After remembering its Spanish counterpart, pepino, I told her and was met with curious glances from her relatives. She explained our tradition and said that she liked to quiz me on the ones I remembered. The topic of vocabulary turned the conversation to a discussion of English vs. Spanish. I realized then how difficult it was to describe the idiosyncrasies of my own language. I explained that in English we use solid "s" sounds instead of the "es" they used in Spain. I talked about the often confusing subjunctive tense in both the Spanish and English language. I even attempted to explain why, you pronounce xylophone with a "z" although it beings with an "x". It was one of the most strange, but interesting conversations I had ever had. There is nothing more difficult than examining something you've always seen as commonplace (and to do it in another language). It was exhausting, but ultimately fulfilling. One of Rocio's cousins, Patrice, admitted to me that although she was terrible at English, she had learned a lot from me. I was inordinately pleased by that revelation. I felt like I had a passed an extremely difficult exam.

I will always count that dinner as a great memory of my trip. I know that it is not an exciting story, but it means a lot to me. My host family and I had many different ways of living and eating, but we also had something in common. We were both interested in exploring subjects that were foreign to us. We took the time out to question and listen and understand one another. Often times it wasn't easy, but we worked together. As well as being a true experiment, it was also an exchange: an exchange of cultures and ideas.

Two days after I returned home I checked my email and saw that Rocio had left me a message. It said, "Recuerda las salchichas". The tradition had followed me home.