By jcapobia
Following up on my last blog post, I attempted to put words into action and completely immerse myself in the language and culture. Starting on Monday of last week, I attempted to fully and unequivocally surround myself in Spanish culture and language. This consisted of only reading, speaking, writing, listening to music, and, most importantly, thinking in Spanish all day for a week. I was going to immerse myself fully in Spanish culture and language, completely shutting the American culture and English language out for an entire week.
And what a week it was. I don’t think I can overemphasize the amount I learned and the level of immersion I felt. While I’ll admit that I failed in my goal to only do Spanish things for a week (as you can probably tell because this blog is written in English), it was still a pretty cool experience.
Immediately I saw benefits:
- When I couldn’t think of a way to express something in Spanish in my head or I didn’t understand a word in the novel I’m reading, La Torre Herida Por El Rayo, I looked it up on the SpanishDictonary app on my phone. This vastly increased my vocabulary.
- Orally, I found myself more fluent in the sense that I didn’t need to change languages every second. Whenever I heard or read Spanish, since I had been thinking in it all day, I didn’t need to translate it in my head. In a weird way it was received by my brain in the same way I naturally receive and understand English.
- And most important of all, I felt more like a true Madrileño, a feeling I won’t try to put into words because it was surreal and I’m not really sure how to express it.
However, by Friday I gave up and indulged myself in SNL videos and 2chainz videos. It become very difficult to only speak and think in Spanish because I honestly felt unable to express myself and incapable of describing things sometimes. Also my head actually physically hurt. Culturally, I had trouble avoiding American culture because it was pervasive (The Walking Dead and Netflix commercials in the Metro, US Pop Top 40 Hits in the gym, etc.) making it impossible to escape.
Overall though, I must blame some of my failure on the other students in my GW Madrid program. Although a few of them tried to only speak Spanish during the week with me, they mostly reverted to English when necessary. Some seem to have little interest in using the language at all and completely immersing themselves. I think it's impossible for me to completely immerse myself if my friends, the people I spend 90% of my time with, only speak English and do American things. Although I'm guilty of it as well, all too often I think they'd rather talk about Trump and American politics, defer any effort to try to make Spanish friends or gain new experiences, and remain more as American tourists in a foreign city than as true Madrileños.
I am being critical of my friends (whom I love 🙂 ) to prove a larger point for those trying to completely immerse themselves in cultures. Culture is more than a language or a set of customs, it's a way of life and a way of seeing the world. I think you get out what you put in. There's a big difference between being somewhere and living somewhere. When you travel somewhere, you are a tourist in a foreign city looking at buildings and museums, but when you live somewhere it gives you the chance to experience so much more. If I learned anything this week, it's that there's no halfway. For your study abroad experience, you either immerse yourself fully or you listen to your American music, speak English all the time, and watch Netflix at home until your last day abroad comes. Immersion is a choice, not something that results from a simple change of location
To my GW Madrid friends and those prospective study abroad students: Please try to shed your Americanism, just for a few months. I promise you won’t regret it.
(Author’s note: A couple Austrian and Peruvian friends of mine would like to be recognized for their appearance in my second blog photo. Their names are Carla, Carina, and Alex. They are slightly above average friends. That is all.)
