Students reflect on overseas experiences

Since January, Ellen Keating, a 20-year-old IU junior majoring in comparative literature with a minor in Spanish, has adjusted and is thriving as an American studying in Seville, Spain.\nAs she walks to class at the University of Seville, lugging her big dictionary around if for no other reason than to read the new Spanish edition of Rolling Stone, she realizes she's truly made Seville her home. She finds it odd how uncomfortable she was making the transition, when her only problem now is finding a way to stay beyond the semester's end.\n"If it comes down to it, I might just have to marry a torero (matador) in order to stay," Keating wrote in a letter to her family. "But don't worry, you'd all be invited, and we'd subtitle the wedding."\nKeating said she is now more confident in herself and her communication skills, which were a nerve-racking obstacle upon arrival.\n"At the beginning I was always frustrated," she said. "Simply ordering food, taking a taxi or telling my señora that I was going out made me nervous." \nKeating barely remembers a day when she didn't struggle to communicate in a country where even the dogs understand the language, and even though she discovered that "peek-a-boo" is a universal phrase -- something she learned while playing with her host family's grandchildren -- she said being jealous of the language skills of a kindergartner is humbling.\n"Their grandkids are adorable, but I couldn't help but feel frustrated when 4-year-olds speak better than me," Keating said. "To communicate, I feel like I'm all of a sudden using a dial-up connection when all my life I've been using DSL. Fortunately, my Spanish gets better every day and kids are so easy to please, even in another language."\nNot surprisingly, she has learned 10 times more from talking with her host family, watching movies, reading the paper and going out with her friends than she has from classes. Keating believes her mastery of Spanish text messaging is a good example of her progress.\n"Imagine phrases like 'c u 2nite' and 'lol' in a foreign language," Keating said. "I speak mad Spanglish now, too, and I even have dreams in Spanish."\nDespite the University's role as a pioneer of international studies, it wasn't until the mid-1950s that annual intercollegiate programs abroad were set up for Indiana students. In 1959 IU's Department of Spanish and Portuguese began a program in Lima, Peru, the first U.S. overseas study program in the southern hemisphere, according to the Office of Overseas Studies.\nLiz Oates, another IU student studying in Seville this semester, is a senior whose concentrations are in mathematics and economics. She explained in an e-mail that her decision to study abroad meant leaving a perfectly happy life in Bloomington.\n"I was sad to go, but that makes the experience that much more valuable, because it's really hard to grow in your comfort zone," she said.\nBoth Keating and Oates said one of the largest differences between the two countries is that the Spanish place more emphasis on community.\n"Success means something different here," Oates said. "There's more of a focus on people and less on money. In the U.S. people live for tomorrow -- you want to go to college so you can get a job so you can work so you can make money so someday you won't have to work -- while the Spanish live for today. They follow their impulses and savor life. Americans have a 'live to work' mentality whereas, here, people work to live."\nAside from speaking another language, the IU students have taken to a separate way of life altogether.\n"I know I will have to adapt in some ways when I get back to the U.S. because it's not practical to live this way there -- and sadly so," Oates said. "It isn't practical to live any other way here. Spain in two words: fiesta and siesta!"\nAnd while in Spain, the students eat and drink well.\n"Dorm food is like dog food in comparison, and the oranges here put Florida oranges to shame," said Oates, a native of Coral Gables, Fla.\nAnother difference between Spain and the United States' eating habits is that, at a Spanish restaurant, it's often cheaper to order wine than water, and beer is often cheaper than soda.\n"Plus, my family always gives me the choice of a juice box or some red wine with lunch and dinner, which I find funny," she said.\nFor nearly two months, Keating, Oates and other IU students have survived a culture without hamburgers, cups of water with ice, central heating and "The Simpsons" in English, yet they are doing surprisingly well in this college town totally unlike Bloomington.\n"I think the world stands pretty still during the course of five to eight months," Oates said. "I suspect I'll be surprised by how much my world at home hasn't changed when I return. The biggest changes will be in me, and that's a bit scary, I guess."\nThe students, who leave Europe in May, are alike in their sentiments that everyone should experience what it's like to be a foreigner.\n"It challenges your perception of yourself and your understanding of other people in the world," Keating said. "It amazes me how much I define myself and other people by what we say and how we say it."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Nate Gowdy at ngowdy@indiana.edu.