Spain Language Immersion in Andalucia

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.

Rachel Goldman

Language Immersion in Andalucia (ESHL)

The day I got back from Spain, I stuffed five disposable cameras into my purse, watching it bulge angrily with the added weight, and drove to my nearest Right Aid to have them developed. That night at the dinner table, I passed each picture around one by one, checking for stray fingerprints that managed to find their way onto the faces of my friends and host family that smiled up from the photos. To my eager American family I explained the architecture of the Palacio Real, the layout of the Plaza Mayor, Cordoba's tiny and twisting streets and the beautiful mountain views from atop a castle in Priego. One by one I named my group members, pointed out my host parents and my two host sisters and the bed where I slept in for two weeks while I lived with them. Remembering every detail of my trip I would smile with the inside jokes that would creep up throughout my stories, not really funny to anyone at my dinner table but fun to remember.

The pictures, all 148 of them, are stacked beside my bed, waiting until I can find a photo album and the time to organize them into a presentation that will help me remember The Experiment forever. Looking at the picture of my group, I realized how lucky to walk away from this experience with so many new friends. I can imagine my friends scattered throughout the US sinking back into their lives and I can look forward to lengthy emails that I know I will be sending and receiving from so many of them. I am so thankful to all of them because of how much they enriched my experience.

When I think of my stay in Cordoba, where my group lived during our language classes for two weeks, my memories are snapshots of the group huddled on the comfortable couches in the air conditioned Salon de Te, weaving through the tiny streets which we began to know my heart, or enjoying a Popsicle from one of the many street venders. I can see us laughing, encouraging each others hesitant Spanish, shopping in the dozens of Spanish stores we all came to love or sitting in a jumbled horseshoe in the classrooms of the academia. I am so glad that I got to know all of these people and could use my Spanish in such a fun way.

My home stay is also an experience that I will always remember. One of my favorite pictures if of the bottle of maple syrup that I brought to my family as a gift for their hospitality, and where it still sits in their home. I gave my family the maple syrup my first night as we sat around the massive Spanish tortilla, bread, cheese and ham that my host mother had lovingly prepared. As I handed the maple syrup to my host parents I explained to them that it was very similar to honey, was made in my town from the trees that are everywhere around my house, and that my family and I eat it with breakfast on pancakes. They of course loved it, but even after all my explaining, when I came down for breakfast the next day, I found the maple syrup not besides the butter in the refrigerator but inside a glass enclosed cabinet in the living room, tucked beside the many Jesus figurines and family heirlooms. It is little stories like that that I remember and cherish, as my host family helped me every second that I stayed with them to appreciate and learn the increasingly familiar Spanish customs and lifestyle. As I told them when I left, I learned more form my two-week stay with their family than from my years of Spanish at school. Although only a two-week experience, the home stay is another aspect of the program that is a thriving success in my opinion.

I want to thank you and your colleagues again for your assistance in sending me to Spain with the experiment, I had a truly great time, and as I promised my host family, I plan to visit Spain in the future (stopping at my second home in Priego for sure)!