After two weeks away from home, it is reasonable to be homesick. Perhaps you long for your mom’s home cooking, your comfortable bed, or for your loving mother or father. However, after two weeks in a foreign country approximately 3,873 miles away, if the group of students who traveled to Spain on the first ever Spanish Exchange trip missed home, their smiling faces did not let their homesickness show.
For many years, USC has had a touring trip around Spain, visiting almost every major city. The trip gives a great crash course in geography, though it leaves little time for a key aspect of Spain: the People. Señor Moore, the lead organizer of the program, knew from experience that an exchange allows students to “really know what it’s like to live there.” The Exchange did just that; it gave participating students the unique experience of learning a culture different from the America’s firsthand.
Last October, a group of students arrived in USC from Santa Maria de la Hispanidad, the Spanish school taking part in the exchange. This group had its jokers, its attractive girls and guys, and an overall great personality.
“The people were awesome,” said Nate “Nacho” Novak, a senior, “and the funniest people in the world, although not always in a way you could repeat.”
The Spanish lifestyle is definitely different; families commonly live in apartments without air conditioning in the hundred-degree summer heat of urban Madrid; kids travel mostly by Metro rather than car; groups of friends play “futbol” at the public soccer courts; and with apologies to every American mother and cook, the Spanish food is arguably the best in the world.
Junior Julia Gross exclaimed, “The Spanish food was excellent!”
“La gente de España” was definitely the high point of the trip. Perhaps one of the favorite things about the people for Marlana Senge, a Senior, was how intimate the people were. “In Spain, the people are much more personal than those in America. Friends hug, and they give a kiss on the cheek when meeting, even to strangers.”
In the U.S., a person tends to be seen more as an individual, while in Spain, a student is more often defined by his or her family and friends.
The Exchange was definitely a remarkable experience for each student and family who participated. Teachers always say that the best way to learn a language is to go to that country and immerse oneself in the language. However, when you travel to a certain country, it will soon become something more. Every student left Spain with a second family, and perhaps you may as well after next year’s trip.