The First Week

I am in love with Barcelona. The city is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, and I have had the pleasure of meeting (and living and working with) so many friendly and welcoming people during this past week.

The city has everything that a person could ever want to see: beautiful mountains, lovely beaches, famous architecture, a lively downtown, a gorgeous countryside, etc. It's almost unbelievable that one place could have such a variety of magnificent things to see. And, if you have not had the opportunity to see Barcelona, please don't let my overuse of adjectives make you think that I am over-praising the city; it really is a place that someone would have to see to believe.

I have also been fortunate enough to meet, work, and live with people who are equally as wonderful. The parents of the family with whom I stay may very well be the most welcoming and trusting people that I have ever met. Once again: this is not a weightless overstatement or an advertisement for Barcelona. The family told me last Sunday that they did not even know I would be arriving that day. In spite of that and within two hours of knowing me, they asked me to join them at a "fiesta" (which was sadly one of the few Spanish words that I actually knew at the time); this "fiesta" was actually an extremely intimate Christening (and after-lunch/party) for a friend's baby. Only about 12-15 people were invited to these two events, and I was one of them. I had been in Spain for a few hours, never communicated with the family beforehand, and could not really communicate at that time because none of the adults spoke English and I spoke almost no Spanish. And yet there I was! I was even in the post-Christening photos with everyone that was at the small Catholic church that day.

I work at a tri-lingual Catholic school that teaches Spanish, Catalan, and English to every stydent. While this does not mean that every faculty member at the school speaks English, everyone in the English department (obviously) does. In fact, several native speakers of English (all of whom are from England) work in the English department.

Being able to speak primarily English at school has slowed down my growth in speaking Spanish (which has become a primary goal of mine in the past week), but it is nice to be able to communicate any ideas that I have in full when I am at school. Not being able to fully do so throughout all of Barcelona has been my biggest frustration; what I want more than anything else in this world, for instance, is to be able to express fully how thankful I am to the family I stay with and the others who have shown me such incredible kindness in the past week. I cannot wait until I am able to speak Spanish well enough to do that.

I am aware that only spending a week in a city gives me a limited few of its sights, people, problems, opportunities, etc., but saying/writing that I have done anything other than fall in love with Barcelona would be a lie. This post offers only a brief insight into the experiences that I have had here (both in an outside of the school), but I look forward to sharing more in the future.

Pre-departure Expectations

As I make my way to Barcelona, I have accepted that I can only prepare so much for an experience as unique as the one I have been given. I have learned what I can about Spanish culture, etiquette, and education from an innumerable amount of questionably reliable and occasionally contradictory travel websites, and I have taken in a tremendous amount of potential knowledge from the sudden enclave of well-meaning experts (perhaps the foremost experts in Barcelona who live in the Nashville and Bowling Green areas) who have been sharing all that they know/think/heard-one-time about Spain with me in recent weeks. After synthesizing this information, I have found it safe to make a couple definite conclusions: daily siestas are everything that I have been searching for in life, and I must eat everything that I can possibly consume in the next four-ish weeks. Primarily, however, I have accepted that I stll know little about how life or teaching actually is in Barcelona, and I find that to be thrilling.

I am fortune that I will be living with a host family and working with multiple teachers in Barcelona. Staying and working with people who live in the city will provide me with a much more genuine experience of Barcelona than if I was merely travelling to the city. I know that this immersive experience will require me to be flexible, and I even expect that I will make some (or perhaps more than some) silly mistakes/faux pas in the next month, but I am going to enjoy every moment of it. As for teaching in Spain, I am excited to see what education looks like in a country thousands of miles away, and I cannot wait to use that knowledge to become a better teacher for my students anywhere.

I never would have thought that I’d be on a plane to Spain or have the opportunity to teach in a different country. I recognize that so many once-in-a-lifetime opportunities await me after this plane arrives, and I look forward to growing as a person and a teacher in the next four weeks.