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March 03, 2005
Spain 1992
This was my first trip to Spain and my first trip away from home alone. It was 1992 and I was a junior at MSU (you can see me front and center). I remember it took us 24 hours from takeoff to final landing in Valencia--we had 3 layovers and I was completely exhausted (I took a 6 hour nap upon arrival). The third week into it, I got homesick and called home crying. But my host family was extremely accommodating and friendly, not to mention the fact that the mother was a kick-ass cook which put me completely at ease (after getting over my homesickness).
All 38 of us students made friends very quickly as we were the only people in town that could speak English. Our host families would bug us to speak in Spanish because we'd revert to English too much. "En espanol!" (In Spanish!) We'd bug them to slow down when they spoke Spanish to us. "Mas despacio, por favor!" (More slowly, please!)
We'd spend every afternoon at the beach working on our tans, leave every Thursday afternoon right after our last class of the week, go to the bank for weekend spending money, and take a rail trip to tour some other Spanish town: Madrid, Sevilla, Barcelona, Toledo...wherever the train went. We got to see the Olympic stadiums a week before the games began, met two men carrying the Olympic torch and saw the world Expo. And if we weren't exploring some exciting place, we were spending our time at the local bars dancing and drinking Sangria (fruit punch mixed with wine and fruit). We'd watch the summer festival fireworks, the local Running of the Bulls (not the big one in Pamplona), tour the cathedrals and architectural sites and enjoy the local fare.
We had a blast, got pretty fluent in Spanish (I even started picking up the local accent), and had an experience to last us a lifetime!
Posted by Amy at March 3, 2005 09:30 AM
Comments
That sounds like a wonderful experience! I love to hear about people's travel experiences. One of my favorite things to read is a good travel tale or stories about life in another country.
Posted by: Jessica at March 3, 2005 10:55 PM
Awesome!!
Posted by: Mary at March 3, 2005 01:53 PM
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