When you go to a new country, there are going to be cultural differences that you're going to experience in the first couple of weeks. For me, it hasn't been hard to adjust to the different culture, but there are some things that are just always going to be different to you at first.

One of the things that are most different across all cultures is the food. The food plays a huge role in the formation of the culture, and each country has their own style of food that they're proud of. In Spain, the use of fish in meals is super common, but something that I have been lucky to avoid so far. The food isn't drastically different, just prepared differently and with slightly different tastes. I've enjoyed basically everything that I've tried, which is surprising since I'm a picky eater.

In addition to the food, the meals time are also different. One of the hardest things to adjust to was the fact that the earliest that you eat dinner is 8:30 here. The first couple of days, the easiest way to get used to that was just not to leave the university until 8 so that I would get home and wouldn't have to wait for dinner. Now, it's a little more common, but I am definitely hungry by the time dinner is ready.

One of the best differences between Spain and the US is the fact that it's strongly suggested that you rest after lunch. Since it's really common to wake up early and stay up late, taking a nap in the middle of the day helps me stay awake for my class that ends later at night than any of my classes in Ohio State did. I feel like the jetlag didn't get to me as bad because I was able to take short naps when I first got here, and it wasn't frowned upon. It's for sure one of the things I take advantage of the most when I have the time to.

One of the biggest differences between living on campus to living with a host family is the commute to classes. Every day I have a 30-minute bus ride to get into town instead of a ten-minute walk across campus at the most. Additionally, the bus comes roughly every twenty minutes, so a large part of getting to school is making sure that you're timing the bus right. The weirdest part for me at first was that people would just show up at the bus stop and wait for the bus until it shows up. No one really knows what time the bus is supposed to come, just that when one passes, it's going to circle back soon.

The most unique thing about the city I'm studying abroad in is the fact that the original skyline still exists. Most of the older buildings have been converted into something different than how they originally started, as most of them were churches, but the outsides remain similar to the way they've always been. The building that my university is located in used to be a convent, which is something that would never happen in the US. This makes exploring so much fun because its history and current day mixed together all at once.

When I was leaving the US, I thought it was going to be impossible to communicate. I was worried that people would talk so much faster than I could understand, or they would use words that I had simply never heard before. The people that I know that I'm a student speak a little slower to me, and I don't have any major struggles with communicating other than the occasional forgotten word. When I'm out in public, people still speak to me in Spanish, and I get by fine. My biggest communication achievement so far was a phone call that I made to a stranger where I was able to communicate my issue and understand what I needed to do to fix it.

The change that has been surprisingly difficult to get used to is English. Here, British English is more common, so when signs are labeled in English and Spanish, sometimes I better understand what the Spanish sign is trying to tell me. With anything that is recorded in both languages, a speaker with an English accent is used. It's very weird to adjust to hearing it, which isn't something that I expected to even be an issue.

Now, I feel completely comfortable in my city, and I can semi-confidently navigating traveling to other cities. I'm enjoying my classes, and in addition to learning more about the language, I'm learning things I never knew about the culture. Living in Spain has been wonderful, and I'm not even halfway done with my program yet.