Blog Day 4

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Looking Inward

The start of the second week of the trip brought not only a new city and location but also new challenges. This week is the week of the homestay and definitely the piece of the trip I was most nervous about when I signed up. Being in a completely Spanish environment with only one other person was an extremely scary thought to me. When we first met our homestay parent, Rosa, she took us through a tour of the house speaking only in Spanish and giving a lot of important information. To me, this was a very difficult situation to handle and a lot to process in the moment. After the house tour, I had to sit and just decompress for a minute but looking back it really taught me some things about myself. For example, I learned that when I am a little stressed or nervous, I sort of revert on my personality and become quiet when I am normally very talkative and outgoing. I feel as though I was nervous to talk or mess up in front of Rosa and that changed my personality into a form where I have almost never seen it before.

The Relational Level

The first day of the homestay also taught me about relationships with people across cultures. The first meal that I ate with Rosa and her husband was lunch on the first day and I was very nervous because it was just me and them, so I was all alone speaking Spanish and comprehending what they were saying and responding to it. However, the news was on and I found that it was easy to build an easy relationship with them by simply talking about what was on the news and the recent soccer game. In Chapter 4 of Culture Smart!, Meaney and Viguer discuss the friendliness of Spaniards and how they can socialize over almost anything and I really feel like I saw that with Rosa at that first lunch meal.

The Social Side

Finally, the introduction to the Rosa’s home taught me a lot about the Spanish home and how the “average” Granada resident lives. In Chapter 5 of the same book also talks about the typical Spanish home in a city being an apartment style but bigger than expected on the inside. Rosa’s home has 5 bedrooms in it and 2 full bathrooms all on one floor and going through it, I was truly surprised as to how big it was even though it seemed like a small apartment on the outside. In America, and apartment usually has 2 bedrooms and 1 or two bathrooms and is only fit for a smaller family whereas Rosa is housing herself and her husband, her son, two international students in separate rooms, andLogan and I in a room which was quite unexpected but also pleasantly surprising.

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