Private: Sometimes, the not-so-great things are the most memorable

Going to Spain, one of the things I was most nervous about was staying with a host family. There are all sorts of horror stories out there about what happens with different people’s host families and to be quite honest, host families are really just the luck of the draw. For some of my peers, they had amazing host families that cook fantastic meals and had immaculate houses. For me and the 2 other girls that stayed in my house, that was not really the case. Don’t get me wrong, our host mom was very sweet, the real issue was that she didn’t speak any English, lucky for me, I’m fluent, but my roommates weren’t so lucky. But the language barrier wasn’t the real issue, our apartment was filled with 2 bird, 3 dogs, and 7 cats which were at no point let out to use the bathroom, you can imagine how that went over. Even worse, the meals our host mom cooked for us were just plain scary. I think it was because she was trying to cook what she thought was American food, but honestly, I have no idea. So while this doesn’t sound ideal, its something that I don’t think I would change. It made me and my roommates that much closer and makes for a super interesting story because the house felt like a literal zoo, and I for sure got some good laughs out of the situation while were there too. When you’re traveling things don’t always go as planned so you really have to make the best out of it!