I cannot even begin to describe how excited am I to finally get on the plane that will land me in Madrid, Spain. I have studied more than seven years of the Spanish language and culture and have dreamed of this opportunity for quite some time.
I’m not quite sure when my fascination with Spain began. It would seem that my first ever Spanish-language course in seventh grade would be the moment where I first realized my affinity for the language, yet at the same time I feel like there’s something deeper within me calling me toward the Iberian Kingdom. Spain’s rich history and culture make any other Spanish-speaking country seem to pale in comparison. Visiting a land that once had a truly global empire is not something that I would ever want to pass up.
With as much as I love Spain I’ve tried to do as little preparation for my actual arrival to the country as possible. I can only really explain this desire by likening the situation to that scene from countless movies where a foreigner ends up relocated to a completely unknown country and is entirely bewildered by the language, culture, and customs they find themselves surrounded by. It’s the type of scenario that you hope never happens to you but at the same time catches hold of that part within you that yearns for a sense of real adventure.
Modern technology, however, has taken much of the innocence out of traveling to a foreign country. For example, I am visiting friends and family in England before heading over to study in Spain. I have been able to Skype and email them all of the arrangements of my travels and I had a mobile phone line set up for me for when I got there.
The same goes for my upcoming arrival to Spain. I have been able to Facebook message a member of my homestay family and have been able to use Google Maps to see where I will be living in relation to my university, other students in Spain, etc. Furthermore, I have already been able to open a bank account that I can use for the next six months and I have been able to Skype friends that have already arrived in Europe to hear how they handled first meeting their homestay families, handled navigating in a country with a foreign language, etc.
I have welcomed all of this help thus far and am never one to complain about technological innovations that make life more efficient. At the same time I wonder if some of these preparations will take away the mystique of arriving in a foreign country. I certainly do still have plenty to worry about: what to do when I first meet my host family, how to act around their house, and what my classes will be like, etc. So while I did end up preparing much more for my trip abroad than I originally intended, I’m confident that I can use the opportunities Madrid presents to me to create mystique of my own even if some of the true innocence of traveling abroad has inevitably faded away in the modern world.
