Past Review

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

While the workload and sometimes the lectures left something to be desired in relation to what I am accustomed to at Wellesley, my primary goal in Spain was to become fluent in Spanish and that was definitely accomplished in my classes in Spain. Some of my professors were better than others and were more interactive and promoted class discussion, while others relied more on the Spanish system of straight lecture. The grading system was not quite as rigorous as Wellesley's grading system.

On-site administration of your program

The program's personnel were really wonderful and took care of us very well. There was a separate staffer each for housing, classes and social events and we also had a resident director to oversee everything. Being there for the fall and the spring, I did notice that in the fall the staff were a little more attentive and there were more events to get the group together. Overall though, if I had a question, it was answered quickly and the staff was always happy to help.

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

I lived with one other American student and we shared the top floor of the house which consisted of two bedrooms and a bathroom. Below us was the floor on which our host parents, in their 70s, and their daughter, in her 40s, lived. Frequently the husband the daughter of our host parents would come for lunch and sometimes they stayed in our house, and other times in his house. Once a week, our host parents' grandchildren visited and the eldest, aged 9, stayed the weekend. Because we lived on the top floor, we had a lot of privacy and access to the small roof-top terrace. The host family also owned a small dog. We lived in the Juderia, which is the old section of Cordoba, and we lived behind a church, on Calle San Francisco. <br /><br /> My host family did not speak English and they spoke very colloquial and heavily southern-Spain accented Spanish. This was great for my Spanish comprehension and conversational abilities. I lived in the older part of Cordoba, and so it was easy to walk anywhere (everything was fairly close--10 minutes to school, 15 minutes to the center of town, and 25 minutes to the farthest nightclub I ever went to) and the buildings and streets were very beautiful. I felt very safe in my neighborhood and my host family was wonderful. They gave us freedom to come and go, privacy, good conversation and advice about the city and wonderful home-cooked food. I only needed to buy snack food (although they did provide this to us) to accommodate what I was provided with.

My host mother was a wonderful cook and we had a very nutritious and typically-southern Spain diet. We were never hungry (there were always leftovers) and I only felt like I had eaten something too many times in a row once or twice.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

While our program sponsored more social get-togethers in the fall and honestly, these were a bit lacking in the spring to much disappoint to the veterans from the fall, the cultural events that are held in Cordoba every May and involvement of our program in these events was really great. We had a day for our program at the 10-day fair in Cordoba and we did a traditional pilgrimage and perol with our program. We also went and toured a fair amount of cities, in the tour before the academic year began and throughout the academic year.

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

Overall, Cordoba is a very safe city, although I do wish our program had take the time to explain what parts of the city we should not visit (they did this for other cities that we visited outside of Cordoba.) We had one safety issue that occurred during the fall, but the program had a meeting regarding this in an informal setting (the director's apartment) and the way that it was addressed made everyone feel very safe. I would advice future students to make friends with other students because students tend to either live with their families or with other students (safer environments) and not to leave the center of Cordoba. If there was a health concern, we could talk to one of the staffers and go to the Red Cross Hospital if we needed to.

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

When I left for Spain, I was not incredibly confident in my ability to speak Spanish and to get by in a foreign country. This is not to say that I didn't have plenty of years of instruction in Spanish but I was not big on participating in Spanish classes and this didn't help my confidence level. Of course, I realized I knew more Spanish than I gave myself credit for once I arrived. However, being in Spain was the best thing that I could have done for my fluency and improved my Spanish incredibly. Cordoba's population does not speak as much English as a the population of a bigger city like Madrid might and this also was great for the amount of Spanish I spoke while abroad. I would advice future study abroad students to make an effort to speak Spanish even with fellow Americans. Although host parents, professors and other Spanish students provide great opportunities to practice, speaking Spanish with other Americans makes it even more natural.

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• Host Family

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• Host Family
• Americans

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• Americans