It’s a Wednesday morning before class and I’m eating my daily breakfast of warm milk and toast. Church bells are ringing outside from all corners in the city of Sevilla, my signal that I’m going to be late if I don’t leave soon. But standing between me and the door is the shadow of my señora, demanding to know why, for the second night in a row, I came home before 4:00 a.m. You want to know embarrassing? Try explaining to a 74-year-old señora why your social life isn’t up to par with Spanish culture.
Living with a señora: one of the mainstays of a Spanish study abroad experience. In Sevilla, where I spent the first three weeks of the semester, my señora’s name was Rosalia. Rosalia is a true party girl who scolds me when I come home from the bars too early, like 3:30 a.m. “I just want to make sure you’re taking advantage of your time here,” she explains to me when I try to make excuses. “But Rosalia, it was a Monday night, the bars aren’t open until 4 a.m.,” I tell her. “So?” she asks with such a disparaging look that I promise myself that tonight I’ll try harder, make more of an effort to stay out later.
Rosalia and I also like to watch Spanish telenovas together during lunch and she tells me about all the throngs of men she’s had to fend off during the years. My roommate and I are the last in a long line of American students to pass through Rosalia’s door. “Enough already! I’m taking the money from your rent and taking a cruise to Italy with my girlfriends,” she tells us every chance she gets.
After three weeks of language and cultural orientation in Sevilla, I moved to Murcia for the duration of the semester where I will take all my classes with Spaniards. I’m one of five participants in the new ISA Direct program, a study abroad program that helps Americans directly enroll in Spanish universities. As the only ISA Direct student in Murcia, I was excited about being the guinea pig and taking advantage of being completely independent.
But there’s an often-overlooked side effect to independence: utter confusion and a lot of loneliness. I spent hours trying to devise a schedule that works with the university’s complicated scheduling system, which I immediately spent hours changing. After the first week of classes, I successfully attended one class and made one friend, an exchange student from Northern England. If nothing else, at least I’ll learn how to properly insert words like “brilliant,” “bollocks” and “bloke” into everyday conversation.
Hopefully things will only improve from my first class. I started my Spanish academic career with style, by almost ripping the curtain off the window because I didn’t understand that the teacher was yelling “Use the curtain opener! The opener!” Does anyone really use that word in everyday conversation?
My new host family in Murcia loves the story of my first class, when I almost broke the window. They think it’s even funnier that I decided not to take the infamous curtain incident class because I couldn’t understand the professor. The people of Murcia proudly refer to their accents as “one of the worst accents in Spain.” The decision not to take the class was 95% impossible accent and only 5% curtain debacle – seriously.
I am this family’s first exchange student, and they are rather excited. Every morning my host mom packs me a snack, wraps it up in tinfoil and puts it next to the door. Then they drop me off at school on their way to work with the other two daughters, reminding me not to skip classes. At 2:30 p.m. I get picked up, we go home and the whole family eats lunch together. Then I watch an episode of Friends dubbed over in Spanish and take a siesta. It was all very cute for about a week. When they tried to institute a bed time, I told them sayonara, and now I’m looking for an apartment.
These days I’m working on making friends by trying to join various clubs, sports activities and using curtain openers correctly. After all, Rosalia said she might stop by Murcia on her way to catch her cruise from Barcelona to Italy. And when she does, I better be able to tell her I’m taking advantage of every second of my time here, especially at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday mornings.
Melanie Lidman is a junior journalism and Spanish double major. She is studying in Sevilla and Murcia, Spain, through the ISA Direct program and will be writing about her experiences through the semester. She can be reached at mlidman@umd.edu.
