This past fall (late August through November), my family spent the semester as part of LCU’s Global Campus program in Ávila, Spain. My wife and I taught in the program and my daughter continued her education with both online classes and a course through the Global Campus program. We were able to enjoy the blessings of living in a different country, not just visiting. While three months is not a long time, it did allow us to experience Spain in more in-depth ways than we would have experienced had we just been on vacation for a week or two. We were also able to experience other countries, spending at least a weekend in Paris, Nice, Rome, and London, in addition to time spent in cities throughout Spain.*
* One of the blessings of European travel is the ability to see a lot of different countries due to their proximity. In Texas, you drive for hours only to still be in Texas. For instance, if you travel as the crow flies (which I assume is a straight line)**, from Texline, Texas in the Panhandle to Harlingen, near the southern most tip of Texas, you will have travelled around 1240 km, or 700 miles. The same trip distance will take you from Ávila to Milan, Italy and you will have been in 4 different countries on your journey.*** Flights around Europe are also comparatively cheap. A one-way flight from Amarillo to Harlingen tomorrow will run you $434, where as a flight from Madrid to Milan? $86.
** Crows apparently do not fly in a straight line, nor do bees, so making a beeline for something will not take you straight to it.
*** Don’t forget Andorra, the 6th smallest state in Europe.
The entire program is designed to place students in circumstances where they can experience a different culture and have that culture impact the learning process they undertake. Students not only spent their weeks in Ávila, but also travelled most weekends, visiting places such as Ireland, Greece, Germany, Austria, and Italy. You do not go through an experience like that unaffected and while it probably takes six months* or so to fully appreciate many of the lessons you learn, here are my “way too early” reactions from our semester abroad.
* The 6-month rule is a gift from Bobby Wood, who ran Wilderness Trek out of Twin Lakes, CO for a number of years. After a week-long trek in the Colorado wilderness, most participants were jacked out of their minds, on a mental, physical, and spiritual high. (And also totally exhausted, which may have had something to do with their hypersensitivity to the experience.) Bobby would always tell students that the real lessons would not come until months later. He was right, and I have discovered that to be the case for many different experiences I have undergone. Expect therefore a post around May 20 about the “real” lessons we have learned!
Food
As sad as it is to admit, the first difference I noticed upon our return to the States was the portion size of the meals, or at least, the increased portion I consumed. (Yes, I am fully aware this says a whole lot more about me than it does about Spain!) I think every participant on the trip had their list of restaurants they were going to visit as soon as they returned to the States. Chick-fil-A, for instance, was on just about everyone’s list. For me, it was Chuy’s* and while I loved that first meal—Chuychanga with queso and a bowl of creamy jalapeno sauce—I remember leaving the restaurant thinking… “You probably should have taken it easy, maybe eaten half that amount.”
* In case you are wondering, my list included not only Chuy’s, and Torchy’s Tacos, but also Evie Mae’s BBQ, Chick-fil-A, Whataburger, Raising Cane’s, and Rosa’s. Europe has many of our fast-food restaurants (Ávila has McDonald’s and Burger King), but while they are similar, there is always something a little, well, off at each place. Typically, it’s the cheese. No American cheese in Europe. Go figure!
Spanish food is fairly bland* (to get any sort of spicey kick, buy the “Hot!” sauce), so the Torchy’s queso we ate a few days later was memorable well into the night! Not that it wasn’t good … it just stuck with me for a while.
* Spanish food is not bad, I enjoyed almost all of it. (Don’t ask about the pig ears.) When you come from this close to New Mexico and Hatch Green Chiles, bland really stands out.
Pace of Life
The pace of life here is much more frantic than in Ávila. (And we consider Lubbock one of the slower paced place to live in Texas.) The thing I appreciate most about Ávila is the afternoon siesta and then tapas following that time of rest. It is not a nap I appreciate as much as the intentional slowing down and focusing on those you are with during this time.* We are not only too busy, but a corollary of this is that we are too distracted. I would argue we are never fully present in any relational transaction we undertake. While it may not always be successful, the Spanish people at least have opportunities to remove other distractions and focus on those present with them.
* It was interesting to note that you very rarely saw people walking around the streets looking at their phones, and I cannot think of a time when I saw Spaniards sitting at a table eating while glued to their phones. It may have been happening somewhere, but I did not see it and would even go so far as to say doing so was probably considered a social faux pas.
Related to this is the way in which we (perhaps I should say I) are driven to accomplish things. We found ourselves in Spain spending time just walking the old city of Ávila for no other reason than to just spend time walking.* Here we walk basically for two reasons: to give the dog exercise or to rapidly transport ourselves from one place (the parking lot) to another (our office). I have lamented here my lack of productivity—I am not getting things done!—yet as I said to a student in my class in Spain: “Who is telling you that productivity is the sign of your worth?” We must reevaluate the priorities we have, closely looking at who is defining those priorities for us.
* For those of you who track your steps, it was customary for me to get between 15-20,000 steps every day. One in our party made it a point to walk at least 20,000 steps every day! For reference, I currently am at 1,844 steps and it is almost dinner time. The crazy thing about your steps is that, save for a couple of days I tried to keep up with Albert, I never felt like I was trying to walk that many steps. It just happened through my normal comings and goings throughout the day.
Relationships
Another thing that stood out to me was the way in which friendships were affirmed and valued. Personally, I did not take advantage of the opportunity to make cross-cultural friendships, something I regret, but was able to see others interact and share mementos of their friendship when we were saying our goodbyes. It seemed that everyone had a small gift or token of appreciation* they shared during their last gatherings with others. I want to be more intentional about the way I show gratitude and bless people, including through gifts that show my appreciation for them.
* Do people give house-warming gifts or bring gifts when you visit someone for dinner anymore? It was this sort of feeling or idea that these gifts demonstrated.
Learning
I also want to spend some time thinking through the ways in which learning takes place cross-culturally for topics that do not automatically engender an understanding of cultural influence. For instance, our courses in Art History (with a focus on Spanish art)* or Intercultural Communication have obvious connection points with the Spanish culture. But what about a course such as Algebra? Is math just a neutral subject that is taught and learned the same in any location? I don’t think so, but also have not fully fleshed out the nuances culture provides to such a learning process.
* The Art History class focused on a lot of Spanish art, and in my Christian Heritage (History) class I tried to incorporate events that occurred in Spain, just to try to create a better connection with the students. In some ways, these are low-hanging fruit. It is easy to craft the course in such a way to take advantage of the location which we found ourselves. I would be curious to visit a Spanish Algebra class, to try to determine ways in which the teaching component was different, if at all, from the ways we traditionally teach math in the States.
I do think expectations differ. All of our students took Spanish, taught by a native Spaniard who didn’t speak any English.** Students were surprised, I believe, by his manner of grading when they had very little feedback to go by. Perhaps our students focus on the objective grading component (Tell me how the numbers all add up) to a more subjective style of assessment.) versus a more subjective component. I have not researched this so my perceptions may be off, but it seemed to be the case from cursory observation.
** He said he did not speak English, nor did he speak it in class, but I did find him speaking to his Spanish cohorts in Spanish responses to conversations we had spoken in English. It would be nice to have such a selective understanding, wouldn’t it?
So, there you go, my immediate, three-weeks home list of lessons learned. Be sure to check back in May to hear how these observations have changed and matured.