Teach Abroad after 15 Years of Studying Abroad

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Teach In Spain Volunteer Program

Authored By:

Ashley N.

It was pretty exciting meeting the group of volunteers from the airport! My husband and I were pretty lucky to have done a European kind tour for an extended honeymoon the prior 15 days starting in Rome and ending up in London. We passed through Rome, Siena, Venice, Switzerland, the Rhien Valley in Germany, Amsterdam, Brugge and finally Dover, England.  We were lucky to have not been jet lagged by the time we got to Spain.  We had pretty much adapted to the timezone, paying for bathrooms at some rest stops and towns and buying bottled water in restauratnts. We scraped by with some mangled Italian, German, Dutch and English and we were ready for Spanish and our next adventure until Christmastime!

Our tour group for the European tour on Expat Tours.

Most volunteers it seemed out the gate were recent college grads taking the time to travel and teach before they’ll start their next chapters in life.  It was exciting to hear the adventure and desire in their voices! To see more of the world and see how this experience will change the course of their life. Perhaps before the responsibilities of adult life steps in. 

Fifteen years ago, I had taken a semester to study Spanish in Costa Rica. It was an icredible trip that changed my life! From it, I was inspired to teach in Spanish my first few years at a bilingual school. I had made subsequent trips back to visit the lifelong friends I'd made there.  I took what Spanish I had learned in classes and books and finally put it to use! It was a scary and transformative time, but something that I had always looked back on with fondess. I dreamt of repeating the experience someday and with my spouse.  So, 15 years later (or so), here we are!

​My husband and I, instead of taking a break after undergrad degree graduations, we are taking time to travel before our next life adventures.  Between just recently getting married, him finishing law school, me packing up from 7 years of teaching at my last school and plans for the future, we took this period in life to step out of our comfort zones.  This sabbatical-of-sorts will be used to teach, learn more Spanish, travel, study for a future grad school programs and spend some more time writing in preparation for mine.  We're both emarking upon new careers or different takes on old ones and it's wonderful to have the time to process it.

I recommend it for anyone needing a shake up and a vastly different perspective of the world!

Fast forward 11 years from the start of my teaching career and I’ve had a lot of life experiences in and out of the classroom. I feel fortunate to be in new environments that feel quite normal from my life back home (like) working in an elementary school and speaking a certain level of Spanish.  Many volunteers were bravely taking that plunge to stay with a family knowing some of the language and or not much at all!  Being a lifelong addict of Spanish, I couldn't wait to dive right back in to use it much of the time!  (Check out The Highs & Lows of Living in a City where Few Can Understand You blog where I explore the struggles and triumphs of immersion language learning).  Another volunteer teacher is a retired woman who has adult grown children and will spend these few months learning about another culture and language. She’s returning for the second time and near the same village so she’ll know some people already! I think she’s amazing to do that!  

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We spent about a half a day learning some of the ins and outs of our job responsibilites, some teaching techniques and finally got to meet our families.  We were then off to our individual houses all spread apart in the region of Castilla Y Leòn.  

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                                                              Spread out among the region of Castilla Y León, we have diverse experiences in such a small area.

We found out that there have been nearly 600 Culture and Language Assistants for the 2018-19 school year! They get greeted by the staff and helped set up to find apartments and how to get around. Yet, I feel pretty lucky that we’ll be living with host families and apart of communities to be immersed even more.  We'll all have many stories to tell that remind us how our world really is small and we are more connected than we think no matter the language, region or culture.

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