"What are the biggest differences between the United States and Spain?"

I get asked this all the time from people living on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, but I've been dodging this and any related questions to avoid sounding ignorant.

But, hey, here we are.

Prepare yourself for some sweeping generalities in this one. I typically try (and occasionally fail) to avoid speaking on anything that I'm uninformed about, but, for reasons you'll soon learn, now is a good time for something a little sillier. It's still not easy, though; for starters, how does one describe life in the United States? My first reaction is to start talking about Kendrick Lamar, the underwhelming football and basketball teams that I support, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but there's a decent chance that an American reading this would not relate to anyone of those things.¹ And maybe with some effort I could describe life in Nashville or (less likely) south central Kentucky, but I've never even been to most of the cities or regions that my students here want to talk about.² Moreover, I haven't been anywhere other than Catalonia in Spain.

All that considered, here's a broad list of some of the differences that I've noticed (excluding obvious things like the language differences):

• People living here have nearly as many (and sometimes more) cultural and/or political opinions about the United States as people living in the States, and many people here, particularly younger people, expect Americans to have at least somewhat as many feelings about Spain and Spanish people. My students were disappointed to learn that the vast majority of United States citizens have little to no knowledge about anything related to Spain other than siestas (which, let me just say, are somewhat of a myth), perhaps the tiniest bit of an idea that some people living in Catalonia want independence from Spain, and the existence of Penelope Cruz and/or Enrique Iglesias.
• Speaking of Penelope Cruz and Enrique Iglesias, I've gotta say that the average person looks better here. How ever you would rate my looks on a scale of 1-10 in the States, you'd dock me at least 2-3 points here. It's crazy. I don't know if it's a product of the diet, lifestyle, or simply the style, but, whatever the cause, it's noteworthy.
• I wouldn't say that Spanish people are lazy, which is the perception that most people here believe that those living outside of the country have of Spaniards, but the typical Spaniard is not as concerned with punctuality as your typical American. That Christening that my host family and I went to the first day that I was in Barcelona? We were late. That 8:00 class that I go to every Thursday morning? The teacher's late every time; this isn't even strange, though, because the teacher of almost every class that I go to is at last a couple minutes late. The 8:00 class that I went to this Thursday morning? It was... cancelled? I still don't know what happened, but I know that neither the teacher nor the students were at school when I got here, and, as a product of that, I had some free time to write this post.
• Continuing with a similar theme, people in Barcelona also seem to be less concerned/stressed (depending on how you want to perceive things) with work here. Moreover, while saying such a thing about anyone living in the States would often be considered an attack on someone's character, the observation, which is made so often by Spaniards, is not really offensive here. In my experience, people in Barcelona, like people everywhere, can/do work as hard as anyone when necessary, but Spaniards, in general, are not so consumed by their work that they let if affect their personal lives and stress levels in a tremendous way. I think that's pretty cool.
• People eat all the time here, and that can initially be confusing for a foreigner living with locals. I eventually learned that the food we were eating at 6:00-6:30 was a "snack," but I was throwing down food like it was The Last Supper at 6:30 on my first couple days in Spain, and I paid for dearly at 10:00 when it was time to eat an actual dinner. You see, another thing about Spain that I noticed very quickly was that practically no adult leaves any food left on their plate. I'm known in the States for eating (and, ironically, being late), but it was killing me to eat all the food that I was taking in during my first week in Spain. I've grown used to the eating schedule here quickly, though, and if I miss any "snack" - which are basically small meals - between breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner now, it feels like I'm dying.
• Many of the people who have lived in Barcelona for an extended period of time have become completed desensitized to how wonderful the weather is here. It's rained for longer than a hour one time in the three weeks that I've been here, and people were devastated. The temperature, for reference, is within 2 degrees of 20 degrees Celsius (about 70 degrees Fahrenheit) for the next month. The absolute hottest that it gets in Barcelona is essentially 30 degrees Celsius (about 86 degrees Fahrenheit) in late July/early August, and locals will tell you that the summers here are unbearable. Why? I'll give you two reason: the sun shines like it's going out of style, and people refuse to change their style. Men are particularly guilty of this, and they seem to take pleasure in wearing a sweater, a long-sleeve shirt, and cotton pants regardless of the weather.

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1 Disliking Kendrick Lamar is heresy. Supporting successful sports teams or having a peanut allergy, while unrelatable for me, is acceptable.^↩

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2 Life for me in south central Kentucky primarily includes writing papers, teaching for free, and going to Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. I don't know if everyone else who lives in the area can relate to those three things, but I do know for a fact that 90% of the adults living there also go to Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen quite frequently. ^↩

My Involvement in the Classroom

At Collegio Reial Monestir de Santa Isabel in Barcelona, I work with 4 different secondary teachers to lead 22 class sessions with 14 different classes during a regular week. The numbers make the schedule sound quite busy, but, in reality, I am only in front of students for 22(-ish) hours of a given week. I have a few other responsibilities outside of the classroom like department meetings, and I try to use my non-teaching hours in the school to better my instruction, but it's fair to say that my work-related responsibilities in Spain have been considerably less time-consuming than my student teaching responsibilities in the States, which is nice because it has allowed me to enjoy the city while still getting to work with many different teachers and students.

My responsibilities are the same in most of my classes. My job is to help students prepare for the Cambridge English exams, which are used to assess someone's proficiency in speaking English. I administer practice speaking assessments (in groups of two or three) during the majority of the classes in which I work, and I provide feedback to the students on both an individual and class-wide basis.

I started giving these practice exams during my first day in the school, which was funny because it was the first day that I heard about them. Being a native English speaker who lived in the States, I knew absolutely nothing about the Cambridge English exams before arriving in Barcelona. This wasn't a problem for me, though; I always want to help students in any way that I could, and their higher education/work opportunities (on a global scale because most of these students know 3-4 languages) depends in part on their success on the Cambridge English exams. I used my extra time in the school to learn everything I could about the assessments by talking to other English teachers at the school, reading official documents from Cambridge, and watching example assessments online. Although I have only been here for two weeks, I feel pretty well acquainted with the assessments at this point, particularly the speaking portions of the assessments that I have administered many times.

I have also developed a nice rapport with the teachers with whom I work (and even some teachers with whom I share no classes). I have even spent time outside of the school with many of them. At the end of my second week at the school, some of the teachers started asking me to give lessons/mini-lessons, and I have enjoyed the opportunity to be back in the driver's seat of a classroom even if only for a little bit. We've been out of school for the past two days because of International Worker's Day (more on that in the next post), but I expect to have even more opportunities to be involved in the classroom in the next week.

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.