Submerge yourself in beautiful, fun spanish culture and language!! Past Review

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

I studied at the Autonoma, the university just outside of Madrid, which, to minimal fault of the BU program, was extremely disorganized and difficult to maneuver. While I learned a lot and vastly improved my spanish studying with native speakers in their regular classrooms, I am not confident in my estimated grades. It was definitely rigorous, but also I felt very lost a lot of the time because it's such a different classroom setting than I'm used to.

On-site administration of your program

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

We had minimal to no control over the food we ate in our host families. I got lucky for the most part, though.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

I was personally very intimidated to make spanish friends in the classroom, so I didn't make any, except for one friend I made through our program's intramural soccer run by a spaniard our age. I felt very comfortable living in the culture after about a month or so in Spain.

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

I requested to see a therapist weekly for my mental health, and I was able to, free of charge to me as it was covered by the program, in my own language, too. I also had a medical problem with my foot and was able to receive medical attention from an english-fluent doctor very quickly.

Walking around at night as a woman in any city felt moderately unsafe, but I never feared for my physical safety. I was almost robbed a few times, but I caught it before it happened.

I was able to intern (at two places, because I wasn't satisfied with my first), I was able to challenge myself to take classes with locals with minimal pressure thanks to my home university's policy of pass/fail for classes abroad, I was able to live with a Spanish family and truly improve my language skills every day I was there, with the comfort of American friends to go through the difficult experience with and a support system of english-speaking program staff. They encouraged us to travel and learn and plunge into the culture.

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

It would have been very easy to live on a small budget, I just didn't do it. We were provided meals all week except friday and saturday dinner, and we were provided 12 euros for each of those meals, which was plenty to properly feed yourself. Coffee was my main "necessity" I consistently spent money on, and I would buy two to three cafes con leche every day for 1-2 euros each.

0 = No encouragement, 5 = frequent encouragement to use the language

Our classes were in Spanish, our program director would speak to us in spanish, we were led on tours in spanish... with the exception of time hanging out with american friends, we were living just about entirely in Spanish. This applies to the University Studies level of the program.

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• Host Family
• Apartment

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• Host Family

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• Local Students
• Americans
• International Students

• The city
• the touring the program brought us on
• the things they encouraged us to value about our experience

• internship placements
• organization with UAM

The Outright Urbanite