Granada Part 1

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Individual Reflection

This week, we arrived in Granada, a smaller town in southern Spain. Here, we met with our host families. My host parent(s) speaks only Spanish, and she speaks at a fast pace. I believed I was prepared for this, but I quickly discovered I was not as prepared or knowledgeable about speaking Spanish. This experience has made me develop my CQ drive by examining my confidence level and thinking through how to communicate with what I know and with nonverbal communication. Although communication with my host parent is difficult and sometimes overwhelming, I want to improve by the end of the week with understanding and communicating in Spanish.

Cultural Interactions

The first few meals with our host family were delicious, but there was a lot of food. This may have been because our host parent may not have been sure what to expect when cooking for three people or it may have been cultural. We struggled with some cultural values as we tried to determine whether we should eat everything or let our host parent know it was too much food. We decided to try to let her know it was too much food, and since then she has made less food, but... still a lot. We used CQ knowledge and cultural values to come to a decision to ask our host parent if she would like us to help clean up the dishes and food or not.

Social Implication

Something that I have noticed during our stay in Spain is that regardless of region, drivers in Spain interact much differently with the pedestrians and bicyclists than what we are used to in America. Although this is not necessarily a social issue, it could become one depending on the evolution of the country’s people, and I believe that the way they interact in Spain might not work well in the US. Here, motorcyclists freely weave between cars outside and between lanes and occasionally will swerve around crossing pedestrians, and they are able to park on many sidewalks. I think much of the way people drive here may be due to a stronger focus on other drivers’ cues and intentions rather than road signs and markings. This could be an issue in this country or especially in another country that is not used to this way of driving because many people may not pay attention which could cause crashes or pedestrians being hit.

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