My name is Emily Harrex and I was lucky enough to travel to Spain on a six week exchange over the summer holidays. I travelled on my own, which took around 30 hours in total.

I stayed with my host sister and her family in Madrid, which is also the capital of Spain. During my stay I went to school for four weeks and the other two weeks were spent on Christmas holidays. I settled into my new routine after a few days, however eating lunch at 3pm and dinner at 9pm took a longer period of time to adjust to. The Spanish diet was quite similar to New Zealand consisting of meat, fruit and veges, but they ate more seafood than what I am used to. The traditional Spanish rice dish; paella and the Spanish tortilla were probably my favourite dishes.

Spanish school was very different to New Zealand. The school had a mix of boys and girls and kids as young as preschool age went there (most people I met had been at the same school their whole life). School also started at 8am and finished at 2:40pm and instead of five subjects a day, there were six. At school I couldn’t understand much to begin with, but as time went on it became a lot easier, although the only subject that didn’t get easier was French. My classmates were really nice, and they helped to adjust to the school life.

During one week of the Christmas holidays, my family took me to the south of Spain and we visited places such as Seville, Cadiz and Cordoba, with Seville being my favourite. For the other week of holidays, we were in Madrid celebrating with friends and family. Christmas in Spain is celebrated very differently to New Zealand, with the main lot of presents being given in the 6th of January; when the three wise men supposedly came. Over this period of time there tend to be a lot of family dinners and celebrations as well.

All in all, my exchange was a big success and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The trip also benefited my Spanish speaking abilities and by the time I came back to New Zealand I could understand and speak Spanish better. I would love to go back sometime, but for now I am looking forward to my host sister coming to stay with me in June this year.