My Growth in Spain

        As a Bio major with a concentration in Health and Human Sciences, my degree plan includes an internship component in the health field. And ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to study abroad. I don’t think it was even a month after coming to HPU that I was talking with our wonderful Study Abroad director about my academic prospects. I was focused on finding a program that wouldn’t derail my graduation plan and eventually, I caught wind of a program that would satisfy my internship abroad in Sevilla, Spain. 

        Despite dreams of traveling around the world, I had never left the United States before this program. I found myself 12hours away from my life on Oahu in a place whose culture and language I knew little of. Was it terrifying? Absolutely not. I was completely out of my element, sure, but I had nothing but excitement and wanderlust for the next month of my life. Okay. I talked a big game, but the truth is that I was feeling a tiny bit of uncertainty. While I knew what I had signed up for, there was no telling how everything would play out. From my PHTLS (Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support) training and hospital rotations to simply acclimating to life in Spain, I had no idea what to really expect. I also knew that the language barrier would be a slight obstacle, despite my best efforts to learn as much as I could in a short time. 

        It’s actually kind of funny, my first night in Sevilla, about three hours after I landed, I met the other students in my program. We were a whopping group of three (and eventually just two). I tried striking up a conversation with one of the others, Morgan, asking what her name was, only to be met with a “dos semanas”. She’d misheard me, thinking I was asking how long she’d been in Spain, but my stomach DROPPED when I heard her response in Spanish. After all, with a group this small, I needed people I could communicate with. It ended up being a silly miscommunication and she does in fact speak English. Some people who don’t speak English, though, were my host family.

        I opted to live in a homestay to better immerse myself in the culture and lifestyle here, and boy did I get what I wished for. When I first met Alfredo, he asked me a simple question: “Hablas espanol?”. While I understood that much, I definitely wasn’t anywhere proficient enough to claim that I was good at it. I remember having the stupidest expression of shock on my face as he just smiled and led me up the stairs. In a fun twist of luck, I didn’t speak much Spanish and they didn’t speak much English. Of course, I fully accept that this was on me, since I was the one in their country. But we made it work! Through my limited Spanish, a bit of Google Translate, and a LOT of charades, we were able to communicate.

        It’s easy to play it safe and stick to what feels familiar. For me, that would’ve been holing up in my homestay. But I didn’t travel halfway across the world to play it safe. I thrusted myself into a situation that would push and challenge me because I knew I would be better for it afterwards. So every day, I would leave and explore the city, with or without my newfound friends. My program had a bunch of activities planned, but what I found to be the most gratifying was to just put one step in front of the other and get lost. You notice so much more around you when you aren’t focused on getting somewhere. I found that Sevilla is just another place on Earth. A beautiful city rich with culture, mind you, but it was nothing to be scared of. The people live and laugh, the dogs bark and beg, and the sun rises and sets.

        That being said, there are definitely noticeable differences here in Spain compared to what I knew in Hawaii and other places in the States. For one thing, the days are a lot longer than what I’m used to. The sun doesn’t set until at least 10pm, and the city is still up much later than that. Many places are open quite late and it’s not uncommon to see people, including small children, walking about in the late hours of the night. Nightlife doesn’t even begin until around 1 am to 2 am and it may not end until the early hours of the morning. Even stranger to me is the general atmosphere of safety. Neither me nor the two female students I came here with felt unsafe walking home late at night. I’ve heard the same sentiments from many others, as well.

        Now that I’ve finished my time in Spain, it’s fun to look back on my journey. It’s been humbling, eye-opening, and incredibly empowering. A month is either a short time or a long time, depending on who you ask, but to me, it’s incredible how acclimated I felt to life in Sevilla now. Everything that was strange to me now feels muted, like a simple fact of life. Even outside of my program/internship, I can feel that I’ve grown a bit more. In a way that I can only describe as “stepping into the world”, I feel like I understand life a little bit better. No one way of life is right, people are fascinating, and the key to learning more about both is living it and asking. Thanks for sticking along with my rambles here, I hope it was at least entertaining!