In this second blog post, I’ll discuss my experience fitting into the culture of my host family, as well as the culture of my fellow students.

My host mother, as disclosed in the previous post, was a dog owner. However, prior to arriving in Spain, I thought that she had THREE dogs and her adult daughter living with her. This turned out not to be the case, as she had been hosting foreign students for over a decade and hadn’t bothered to update the information she registered with. I have no idea how likely my circumstances were, but students should keep in mind a potential discrepancy between what is posted about their host and the reality, and consider inquiring about it when initially contacting their host.

Living with dogs was a fairly easy adjustment, considering I had never done it before. I say ‘dogs,’ because a second dog, belonging to the adult daughter (who had moved out) began living with us in the second week of the program. I wasn’t bothered, considering there was still one dog and one daughter less than I bargained for, but, again, students should keep these sort of possibilities in mind.

Unfortunately, I did experience some frictions with my host mother over two (important) topics: food and socialization. Regarding food; my host mother did prepare three meals a day, as per the expectation. But the proportions were often as follows: massive lunch, then a salad or vegetarian patty for dinner. I believe this was partially due to Spanish culture, which emphasizes lunch over dinner, as well as my host mother’s lifestyle-she didn’t eat dinner. I did my best to fill in the gaps by using my scholarship money to purchase snacks, but I still went to bed hungry some nights.

Secondly, my host mother strongly objected whenever I wished to stay in her apartment for the weekend. It was my understanding that students were within their rights to stay in the apartment on non-class days, but from the way she complained, one would have thought otherwise. In all fairness, I believe she genuinely wished for me to take full advantage of traveling abroad.

In any case, I struggled to form weekend plans with my companions. Gender may have played a part; there was an overwhelmingly majority of female participants, who tended to make plans with one another, especially (understandably) when it came to overnight arrangements. But at the end of the day, I think I simply had a very different personality than many of the other kids. While I attended some ‘meet-and-greet’ style events at bars, I simply wasn’t interested in clubbing, or flying to Venice, or getting pricey tickets to football games. When I proposed more low-key events, like going to the local pool or watching a movie, they were soundly rejected. I had to make my own adventures, and again, I accepted that.

So, dear reader, my advice is this: be open and amicable, but explore at your own pace, and get out of people’s hair when they tell you.

Above, ducks at a lake in Madrid. First image is of the storks that nest in Alcala de Henares.