I arrived at the Madrid-Barajas Airport on Jan. 23, 2011, anxious about what awaited me in Cádiz, Spain – about a five-hour train ride south of the country’s capital city. My host father José greeted me at the train station and brought me to his nearby apartment where I met my host mother, brother and sister – only after lugging my three huge suitcases up four flights of stairs.
In that first month living with my host family, I translated Ke$ha and Lady Gaga songs into Spanish for my 12-year-old host sister Sara, met the family’s free-roaming turtle under a pile of towels in the bathroom and ate cow stomach in a stew served by my host mother. I spent my mornings in a grammar immersion class with both European and Geneseo students and we spent the afternoons exploring the city – usually allotting an extra 45 minutes to navigate our way through the maze-like streets of the casco antiguo – old city – of Cádiz.
Classes at the Universidad de Cádiz began in conjunction with the festivals leading up to the city’s world famous carnival, a 10-day celebration leading up to Lent that features non-stop partying, costumed Spaniards, tourists and satirical choruses made up of witty gaditanos – citizens of Cádiz. La Pestiñada and La Erizada were two of such gastronomical festivals in which pestiñas (small pastries) and erizas (sea urchins) – as well as free cerveza (beer) – were given out on the streets for munching.
Classes were hard, mainly because they were completely in Spanish, but outside of coursework, I discovered the Spanish way of life. I took a siesta most days and moving away from my host family into an apartment with German, Spanish and Italian girls as well as a new Geneseo friend gave me a new degree of independence. I shopped for groceries at Cadiz’s mercado central – the oldest covered market in Spain – and learned how to make killer sangría from my Spanish roommate Eva who knew the secret ingredient: more vodka.
Perhaps above all, I enjoyed the Cádiz nightlife alongside my new Geneseo and European friends. Aside from giving us an opportunity to loosen up, it allowed us to practice our Spanish. Whether it was €1 beers at Cien Montaditos in the shadow of the Cathedral, language exchanges – intercambios – at bars loosely organized by the university, eating tapas in the company of locals or karaoke nights at Magdala, I met and befriended people from all over Europe.
With classes only Monday through Wednesday and ridiculously cheap flights courtesy of Ryanair, I also had the opportunity to take a couple awesome trips around Europe. I spent my St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, had a monkey on my head while on top of the Rock of Gibraltar and spent a weekend in Barcelona learning about Spanish regionalism from two new 14-year-old friends. I ate authentic paella in Valencia while ogling the architecture, spent Easter with one of my best friends in the South of France and saw Christopher Columbus’ grave in the famous Catedral de Sevilla.
While both my time in Cádiz and my various travels were punctuated by a few vocabulary slip-ups and other mishaps including seeing cockroaches in a hostel, living without hot water in my apartment for several weeks, sleeping in airports and experiencing human traffic jams caused by Semana Santa (Holy Week) processions, the nerd in me reveled in everything that I was learning outside of the classroom. During my months living in what is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe, I was completely immersed in Spanish history and culture. Whether it was taking day trips to Moor-influenced cities like Córdoba, celebrating La Feria (spring festival) in Jerez de La Frontera or simply roaming the labyrinth of streets that made up Cádiz, there was always something new to be discovered.
The small city on the southern tip of Spain, with its mezcla (mix) of Moorish and western architecture and beautiful beaches, began to feel like home in no time, despite the initial culture shock. Though I missed my family and my friends, and was ready to come back to America after almost six months abroad, I know come January I’ll be missing those days I spent on Playa La Caleta, soaking in the Spanish sun.