Moving to a foreign country at the age of sixteen has been the best yet most challenging decision I’ve made so far. When I fully committed to this program in March of last year, the thought of leaping into the unknown frightened me. A part of me longed for some insight into my life for the upcoming year, so I hopped on over to the SYA website and discovered some blog posts from former students about their year.

After my experience of reading almost every student blog post from SYA Spain from the past two years from start to finish, I discovered that the first couple months of the upcoming year would be a huge challenge of adjusting to a new language and home environment. However, once the teachers viewed the students as responsible and knowledgeable of the language, they were given the freedom to travel independently around the host country with friends over weekends.

This privilege of travelling without adults serves as an opportunity for students to practice their language skills out in the real world and become more self sufficient as young adults. When I first heard about this concept of independent travel in my first meeting with an SYA representative, I was enthusiastic to hopefully be recognized as responsible enough to go out on my own and explore different cities in Spain. In order to feel comfortable with myself independent travelling, I worked extremely hard to improve my language skills, specifically my speaking and pronunciation.

Before coming to Spain, I never realized how American I sound when speaking Spanish out loud. The way we put emphasis on specific vowels and consonants in English is not universal for other languages. Spanish is a dental heavy language that requires you to speak towards the front of your mouth. Although I was speaking Spanish to natives, I wasn’t really speaking the language correctly due to my my casual voice and lack of articulation that made me difficult to understand. I reached out to my Spanish language teacher, Marta, and met with her one on one to practice reading out loud the combination of sounds I had trouble with. Thanks to her, I’m making progress towards sounding more like a native speaker rather than a struggling American abroad.

It’s incredible to think about how far I’ve come since my first weeks in Zaragoza when I carefully constructed each sentence and got frustrated over my lack of Spanish vocabulary. The four classes I take in Spanish helped me to gradually become more comfortable participating in class and writing full essays in a different language. My moments of not understanding the people of my host country are few and far between and speaking the language, in a school setting and with my host family, has become second nature to me. I feel more comfortable participating in the conversations at the dining room table at home, ranging in complexity from politics and world relations to how our days went and what our plans for the weekend are.

I’ve been directly advised by my teachers to “aprovecha” the remaining time I have left here in Spain, so I plan to travel as much as possible and devote more time to be with my host family. I recently participated in an exchange program here in Zaragoza where I shadowed a girl named Julia from a Spanish school. Quickly, we became close friends and I hope to spend more time with her before I head back to the states and she goes off to the university. My support system of family and friends keep me grounded during this year of craziness and difficulty. I couldn’t be more grateful for their unconditional support and certainly look forward to what’s to come in the next half of my year abroad.