Prior to my first semester abroad, in Madrid, I had been studying Spanish for about nine years, beginning with an after-school program in fourth grade, classes in middle and high school, and courses my freshman year of college. As with anything you learn in school, it is very different to the way the world actually works. I can confidently say that I learned more Spanish from August to December of 2013 than I did during all of the previous nine years.

 

I have always had an interest in other languages and have enjoyed learning them for as long as I can remember. When my parents found out that there was an after-school Spanish program at my elementary school, they asked me if I wanted to join and of course I said "sí"! It was a fairly informal program, more after-school care than Spanish but I loved it anyway. Being so young, I did not learn anything more than things like counting, colours, and days of the week, but my interest had been piqued. 

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The next real opportunity I had to learn Spanish came in the seventh grade. As a sixth grader in Florida, if you tested well enough on your state English reading exam, you could elect to replace it with Spanish classes the following years. I did well on my English exam and of course signed up to take Spanish next year. My first formal Spanish teacher was named Mrs Arth, I remember her very clearly because she was from Bulgaria and spoke seven languages. Mrs Arth had a profound effect on me, not only by teaching me Spanish, but also inspiring me to want to continue learning languages and showing me that it was possible, even easy, if you went about it the right way.

 

In school I continued in Spanish classes in eighth grade all the way through high school and into my freshman year of college, where I knew I wanted to get a minor in Spanish long before I had decided on any kind of major. However, I also got to practice my Spanish outside of the classroom as well.

 

Living in Florida presented me with plenty of opportunities to converse with native speakers. We also took family vacations to Mexico and Costa Rica which gave me a great opportunity to practice, whether I liked it or not! In fact, I was often the translator for my parents, who do not really speak Spanish at all. On multiple occasions I dealt with the car rentals, hotel check-ins, restaurants, and shop owners.

 

My Spanish-learning really culminated with my semester abroad in Madrid during the fall semester of 2013, which you can read more about here, however I still strive to practice and improve my Spanish every day.