I’m not exactly sure where to start my story; the obvious choice being the beginning, but I think I will skip the boring parts. In this post, I will talk a little about my journey to Seville, orientation, my host family and my fears and hopes for my two months in Spain

I travelled from London Gatwick airport to Sevilla on the 24th of May. It was not a direct flight, unfortunately, which means I had a layover in Madrid; guess what it was EIGHT HOURS!!!!!!!!!! Dramatics aside it was a very long period of doing nothing, because I arrived at the Madrid airport at 12am in the morning, so every shop was closed except good old MacDonald’s. Finally 8am came, and it was time to board the plane; I had worked myself into a mini contained panic attack, all my fears and doubts hit me; it was suddenly real to me. When we arrived at the airport ( I say we because I later realised there were many students abroad students on my flight from Madrid) we were met by the lovely people from CIEE, who gave us our orientation folders and dropped us off at the meeting point where we met both our designated walking buddies for the three days and our host senoras.

My host familla

Initially what put me off study abroad was the fact that most programs require you to live with a host family. That freaked me out, not only will I be living in a none-English speaking country I would have to live with strangers too! The wonderful thing about this program is that it gives you options to live with a host family or student accommodation. Ironically after doing research I decided to suck up my fears and pick a host family as my first option; I’m loving it so far. My host family consist of a husband and wife, I rarely see the husband but when I do he is always so nice and gives me lots of little advice. My host mother is like my second mum, my few days here she’s treated me as her child. For example, my first two days she walked me to my meeting point in the morning and afternoon even though she was not required to, she always checks on me in the morning to make sure I’m awake and always asks me about my day. (on a side note my host family does not speak or understand English, and my Spanish is not great, so these interactions are often comical but great nonetheless)

Orientation

Orientation lasts for three days, and I have to say it has been one of the most organised orientations I have been to, and I’ve been to a lot. All your questions get answered promptly, your orientation guides are friendly and healthy, and you get all the information you need to know to survive living in Seville.

My hopes for this blog

I plan to be able to discuss some of the things that I found no answers to when I was contemplating studying abroad. What are the race relations like in Spain? How easy is it to make friends, what exactly is there to do in Spain, etc.

I wrote more than I expected.

until next time.

hasta luego

Location: Sevilla spain