After dinner tonight, Alicia (my host mother's 14-year old granddaughter) was working on homework for her English class. There were a few words she didn't know, so she asked me for help. I got really excited when she asked me what "study abroad" meant, and then, of course, I had to explain my reaction. She's very bright so she understood. She's excited to travel to England on a school trip to practice English this summer. She offered to help me if I ever need help with Spanish grammar.
Sometimes at night, I can hear Alicia's dad or Amparo drilling her on English conjugations or vocabulary words in the other room. It's very interesting for me to hear, because I've practiced many of the same words in Spanish.
I ran through the Arc and on the other side there was a big park with lots of trails, several fountains, some strange statues, and a very intriguing palace. I also researched this when I got home, check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parc_de_la_Ciutadella
The program coordinator from the University of Barcelona put together a language exchange for us with students at UB studying English. The idea is that once a week, we'll all meet together in a local restaurant or bar and spend half the time speaking in Spanish and half in English. I missed the first get-together because of my trip to Ibiza, but I'm looking forward to going in the future!
Yesterday, I was meeting a bunch of other Dartmouth students outside the University building after lunch to to exploring the city. When we were deciding where to go, we started talking to a group of students who turned out to be from Southern France. They explained that they're on vacation from University and are traveling around Europe for 10 days. They spoke English pretty well, so we got talking about things to see in Barcelona. They also gave us advice of things to see, places to see, food to try in France, when we visit in June. We ended up talking to them for over an hour!
From this experience I learned:
1. It takes a little bit of courage to start talking (especially in Spanish!), but making international friends is awesome. Going for it and putting aside a fear of embarrassment tends to pay off.
2. Europeans are all much more worldly than Americans. These kids were my age, and they all spoke English much more fluently than any of us speak Spanish. Not only that, many of them were familiar with other languages as well.
3. It was very cool give advice about things to do and places to go in Barcelona. It was like we were the experts!
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