Mary Martinez- Blog Abroad
Blog #1
A car to the Austin airport. A plane to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. A shuttle to my terminal. A plane to Madrid. A bus to Cáceres. I spent about 24 hours traveling from my parent’s house to my host family’s house. I was disoriented, tired, and I needed a shower. The last thing I wanted to do was have conversations with three complete strangers. Thankfully, my host family expected this and encouraged me to shower and rest after they served me a tuna salad lunch. Once I felt better, I knew I had to get closer to my hosts to prevent a torturously awkward month. At first, I just sat in the same room as them and asked questions. I talked about my family, my hometown, and what I was studying. Our conversations have grown deeper and we have grown closer. I feel comfortable asking them for help and even celebrating successes together. While I am excited about the connection I feel to this family, I am more excited about my connections with my fellow students. I don’t have a lot of friends in the states. The friends I do have are all similar to myself. We met through shared interests and stayed close because of shared values. But participating in the Conexiones program has introduced me to people from different backgrounds that are drawn together by one goal: to be immersed in Spanish culture and understand its relationship to the Southern United States. These past two weeks, I’ve frequently asked myself why it is easier to make friends abroad than it is back home. Is there something special about Cáceres that makes it easier for me to connect to people? Did something change in me when I boarded that first plane that made me better suited to extraverted activities? No. The simple answer is that I have no choice but to make connections here. I can’t spend a month in a foreign country without a support system, so I’ve had to create one. I am not saying that studying abroad comes with a friendship guarantee. I’ve had to make a conscious effort to change my habits in order to make connections with my host family and my fellow students. That effort is the first thing I’ll be sure to take back home with me. Follow along as I figure out my other mental souvenirs.June 2025
Blog #2
Living in Spain can feel like an alternate reality. It’s not just the unfamiliar language, colorful euro notes, and excess of roundabouts. It’s the way everything feels almost familiar yet starkly different. The first culture shocks I experienced were small. My host family doesn’t keep a trashcan in bathrooms or bedrooms. Meals are eaten later than in the United States. Water is not served automatically in restaurants. As I spent more time here, I experienced larger shocks. The most shocking difference was casual racism. I don’t mean manifestation of racial biases through microaggressions. I mean sweeping generalizations about racial groups that are said comfortably in the presence of unfamiliar people. One conversation my host family had was telling me about Romani people living in Spain and other parts of Europe. They used dated terms and mimicked their accents. They complained about them being noisy and cheap. My host dad even told me “No one in Europe is racist until a [Romani] moves next door.” This conversation was extremely uncomfortable, and my classmates have shared similar experiences with me. This conversation reflected how living in a diverse city has changed the way I view people from other cultures. It helped me to appreciate how the places I’ve lived have helped me to be more accepting of those unlike myself. It also helped me realize the deeper cultural differences that weren't clear to me when I first arrived in Spain. But culture shock can’t be described just by a series of conversations or a list of surface-level differences. It’s the culmination of all these experiences that make me feel homesick. The unfamiliarity with simple cultural practices instantly tells anyone I encounter that I do not belong here. So how do I get over this shock and homesickness? Doing familiar activities like watching my favorite shows or listening to my regular playlist gives me consistency. Spending time with my classmates and discussing our troubles helps me feel less alone in more ways than one. Calling my friends and family is helpful, but the seven hour time change makes that difficult. The truth is, the only way to get over culture shock is to get used to it, and I’ve certainly gotten used to the better parts of Spanish culture. July 2025
Blog #3
I thought that studying abroad would give me a chance to study outside of the classroom just by studying in a different classroom, but my program allowed me to explore even more. We took four field trips to cities throughout the region of Extremadura to further our study of the history of Spain and its relation to the Americas. Our first excursion was to a town called Mérida. This city was once a capital of the Roman Empire, and I couldn’t have been more excited. As someone who studied the Latin language and Roman history, I recognized a lot of the architecture in Mérida as similar to what existed in Rome during that time in history. This excursion gave my class a chance to engage with history apart from readings and lectures. It gave us context, and was proof that this city had existed since 25 B.C.E. The following week, we visited the Guadalupe Monastery in the town of Guadalupe. This was a sight of an apparition of Saint Mary, and I had never heard of it, despite being raised in the Catholic Church. This visit allowed me to see the religious rationalization behind Spanish colonization from the Spanish perspective. It also allowed me to experience a religious site through a scholarly perspective, instead of a personal, religious perspective. The third week brought us to Trujillo and its medieval castle. This excursion really made me feel that I was in Europe. We envisioned Trujillo as the stronghold it once was and learned about the conquistadors that called Trujillo home before colonizing parts of the Americas. This site visit gave me a deeper realization of how many Spanish people view the Age of Exploration. They see the conquistadors as people that shared Spain’s greatness with the rest of the world rather than people that settled on land that wasn’t theirs. Finally, we went to our sister city of Albuquerque. This town is small, and we mostly went to feel the connection to Alburquerque. The highlight of this excursion was a beautiful fresco painted in city hall by New Mexican artist Frederico Vigil. It showed the connection between the cities by depicting cultural symbols from both places. We spoke to a group of young artists who were just as excited as we were to learn about Albuquerque as we were to learn about Alburquerque. These excursions were not part of the immersive experience of my trip, and they were the times I felt the most like a tourist. But they emphasized just how many places are important to learn about to fully understand the connection between Spain and the Americas.July 2025
Blog #4
One of my biggest hesitations before studying abroad was food. As someone with celiac disease, I have to follow a strict gluten free diet. When I travel, I try to eat at chain restaurants I’m familiar with to minimize risk and my food anxiety, and I rarely eat food prepared by people who are unfamiliar with the specifics of my dietary needs. Before arriving in Spain, I reached out to my host mom to explain my celiac disease and offer to help think of ways I could help prepare food. She told me not to worry. I was worried. On my first day there, my host family called me into their kitchen to show me their grocery hall. They had bought me two different types of bread, cookies, and various other things to prepare meals I could eat. It wasn’t just my host family that made being gluten free in a new place easier, eating out was completely different than it was back home. To best describe how helpful waitstaff was, I need to describe a typical service encounter in the U.S. Whenever I go to a new restaurant, I search their name on my Find Me Gluten Free app. I read safety reviews and their allergy procedures. When I arrive, I tell the waiter or cashier that I have a gluten allergy–which isn’t exactly true, but a lot of people don’t know what celiac disease is. If the waiter seems hesitant, I ask how the food is prepared to determine what the risk of contamination is. It’s not uncommon for me to feel unwell after eating out, or even just skip that meal if there isn’t something I can eat. In Spain, I had a similar process, but I could use vocabulary that was actually more accurate. I would simply say “soy celíaca,” and I would be told not to worry. When I asked follow-up questions, waitstaff would emphasize that they knew how to take care of it. They also would point out specific things I could and couldn’t eat without even having to check with the kitchen. It was so much easier to exist, but the best part was that my food tasted way better. I found myself having the best bread since before my diagnosis in 2013. I got to try flaky pastries and fluffy pizza crust I thought I would just never try again. The increased cultural awareness and consideration in dietary restrictions was a culture shock, and it allowed me to be more immersed in the program.July 2025
Blog #5
It’s been about a month since I’ve returned home after spending June in Spain. I’ve readapted to the time zone, and I’m finishing up my assignments. Every time I see an old friend or neighbor, they ask the same question, “How was Spain?” I sigh and say that it was amazing. If they inquire more, I’ll tell them about my host family, the classes I took, and the weekend trips my classmates and I planned. It’s gotten easier to qualify the month away from home in a few words, “I learned a lot and had a blast.” Each time I describe my trip, I wonder how my answer will change as there’s more distance between me and Cáceres and if the trip changed me at all. I hope that it did. I was so nervous to study abroad before going. I thought my Spanish skills weren’t nearly good enough, that I didn’t know enough about colonialism, and that I wouldn’t feel comfortable. But something made me jump into this adventure and take the risk. I do feel more confident in Spanish now, and I know I want to keep studying and practicing the language. I didn’t know about the specifics of colonialism that my program focused on, but that was okay, because I learned it all in Extremadura better than I could have here. Yes, there were parts of the trip that felt uncomfortable, but I made friends and grew close to my host family. Studying abroad taught me that I am adaptable and resilient. I can take risks and I know that it’s okay if they don’t work out. I’ve even grown more comfortable with being alone in a strange place. From figuring out the Cáceres bus station to walking across Seville alone to find my weekend accommodation, I had to rely on myself and trust that I could figure it out. Maybe a more accurate description of my time in Cáceres would be “It was hard, but I took every opportunity to make the most out of it. I learned so much, saw so many amazing sights, and I got to immerse myself in the culture of Cáceres. I can’t recommend it enough.”July 2025
