By Marie Kimball (CAS’23)<\/p>\n
\u201cVale!\u201d Hearing this expression in my home, in class, and on the streets was confusing at first. Throughout my time in high school and at Boston University, I had been learning Mexican Spanish. Now that I was in Spain, there was a lot of new lingo I had to learn, including \u201cvale,\u201d which pretty much means \u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n
For my fall semester of 2021, I decided to study abroad in Madrid, Spain, and it was one of the best decisions I\u2019ve ever made.<\/span><\/p>\n On the very first day a bus dropped me off at my host family\u2019s house, and this probably would\u2019ve been the most nervous I\u2019ve ever been in my life if I hadn\u2019t just been on two different planes for ten hours. So actually, I was about to fall asleep and didn\u2019t have anything else on my brain. But, I had never lived with a host family before, and didn\u2019t know what to expect. Well, it was one of my favorite parts of the experience. I lived with a family with three young children, and between the lively family dinners, movie nights, and weekend strolls around the city, I grew very close to them and was sad to leave.<\/span><\/p>\n My classes were fantastic, as well. BU Study Abroad students in Madrid attend the Instituto Internacional, in which students from many American universities take classes in both English and Spanish. My three classes were about literature and women\u2019s history, and all of them were in Spanish. Professors who had lived through the Movida of the 1980\u2019s and Franco\u2019s regime from 1939-1975 all shared their firsthand experiences with us while we learned from their expertise. It was a great experience.<\/span><\/p>\n While in Madrid, I also had an internship at La comisi\u00f3n para la investigaci\u00f3n de los malos tratos a mujeres, or what was essentially Spain\u2019s commission against gender violence and prostitution. Not having just gotten off of a plane this time, I was extremely nervous my first day. Tackling a job in my second language was a daunting task, but every day was better, and by the end I felt like I had developed meaningful relationships with all of my thoughtful and patient coworkers. My coworkers and I still text on what\u2019s app to check in!<\/span><\/p>\n Also, I met great friends with whom I travelled within Spain and throughout Europe on the weekends. Between visiting Toledo, Segovia, El Escorial, Barcelona, Italy, and Portugal, I had so much fun, and learned so much about different cultures. That I had this opportunity to travel still seems surreal. It was incredible.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, I learned more about myself than I had in the previous few semesters combined. Living in a different culture from your own, without any familiarity (at first at least) with the people around you allows you to unlock parts of yourself you couldn\u2019t before. For instance, I learned how to spend time with myself, and began to love it. I spent plenty of time with myself, going to different museums and caf\u00e9s, or even just walking around the city to explore and think. I enjoy being with myself like never before. Also, from all of the new experiences I\u2019ve collected, I have a better perspective every day. This one is harder to explain, but I feel as though I have my priorities in line more now, and have achieved more balance in my lifestyle.<\/span><\/p>\n And it\u2019s true that you might read all of this, and simply say \u201cvale, vale.\u201d However, I hope you take my experience as reason to study abroad yourself. You won\u2019t regret it!<\/span><\/p>\n Photo credit: Marie K.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Marie Kimball (CAS’23) \u201cVale!\u201d Hearing this expression in my home, in class, and on the streets was confusing at first. Throughout my time in high school and at Boston University, I had been learning Mexican Spanish. Now that I was in Spain, there was a lot of new lingo I had to learn, including … Continue reading Vale vale vale<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8413,"featured_media":277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[17,136,39,137,30,135,129,127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/khcblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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