Living La Vida de España

For a dozen Rivers students, classes didn’t end with the last exam in June. Rather they spent the first two weeks of summer break immersed in the language and culture of Spain as participants in Rivers’ Summer Session in Spain program. Now in its twelfth year, the program is based in Cádiz, one of the oldest cities in western Europe and the oldest continuously-inhabited city in Spain. While it is facilitated by Centro Mundo Lengua, the program itself has been designed by Rivers to maximize the students’ exposure to daily life in a foreign country, to explore the history of Cádiz, and to encourage students to make connections and comparisons to our own culture and history – all while gaining fluency in Spanish.

“Students apply for the program in December,” said program director and Spanish teacher Melinda Ryan. “The faculty look for proven motivation and diligence in the language but also at the student’s level of involvement and leadership in Rivers life in general. It is a super intensive immersion, for which our students need to have shown a high level of commitment to their academic work and the maturity to make good decisions as they represent Rivers as global citizens.”

The applications are reviewed not only by the language faculty but also by the students’ advising teams to ensure that the whole group is able to rise to the challenges of the rigorous schedule and to living and studying in a no-English environment. The program accommodates 12 sophomores and juniors, all of whom have finished Spanish III or Spanish IV. When the students are accepted into the program, they essentially take an extra course at Rivers for the second half of the year, meeting once a week to prepare for the program. They study specific vocabulary targeted at the situations in which they will be living, as well as the history of the area around Cádiz and its pivotal role in Spanish and World history. They also go over the logistics of living in a foreign city with a host family.

The faculty work with Mundo Lengua to find host families who live in the old part of the city so that the students can experience the city’s rich history and culture even while they are walking around. The Old Town is filled with Roman and Phoenician ruins and their history intersects with America’s during the Age of Discovery; in fact, Columbus’ voyages to the New World have many connections to Cádiz.

Once in Cádiz, the students attend classes in the morning. Afternoon classes take the students out of the classroom and on site to live the culture of Spain in museums and historical sites, by cooking traditional food, or taking Sevillanas dancing lessons, while practicing their language skills in a no-English, native speaker, rapid-fire Spanish environment.

“The diversity of lessons really helped with the learning process,” commented DJ Gardner ’15. “No two days were alike which really created an atmosphere in which you needed and wanted to pay attention. We would go and interview strangers, watch videos, and talk with (Spanish) students, which really helped my understanding of the language.”

“We made paella for lunch one day,” added Aimee Schechter ’15. “We bought all of the ingredients in the open-air market before cooking. I had to buy a kilo of red peppers and others had to buy tomatoes, lemons, etc. We went back to school and put all of the ingredients in a huge paellera with rice, olive oil and spices… It was delicious.”

Students live in pairs with families who may be retired grandparents, or young families with children of their own. They have to learn to navigate the dynamics of family life in small, older homes where they may have to wait their turn for a shower. Perhaps one of the most enriching experiences is “sobremesa,” the time after dinner when the Spanish will remain at the table and talk, a concept foreign to many American families who eat on the go.

“Alfonso and Ana were loving and friendly and we really felt at home,” said Kaitlyn Foley ’16 of her host family. “The food was delicious and we got to try a lot of new things.”

Sightseeing includes day-trips to Granada and the renowned Alhambra, as well as Gibraltar which gives the students the sense of how close Spain is to Africa and what a strategic location it has been throughout history as a gateway between Europe and Africa.

“It is one thing to learn a lot of history in class,” commented Kyle Katamba ’15, “but to see it in person was really cool. At the Alhambra and in Granada, the mix of Muslim and Christian cultures really highlighted the changes that occurred after the Reconquista.”

Unlike most other foreign students enrolled in immersion programs through Mundo Lengua, Rivers students must take a final exam on their coursework and are graded not only on academic performance, but also on their academic leadership, their assimilation of the culture, their level of motivation, their independence and reliability, and their contributions to the group experience.

“I would recommend this experience to anyone who is willing to put the extra time in, because there is plenty done during this program that can be viewed as a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Pete Simmons-Hayes ’15. “While it is great to see beautiful things like the Alhambra, it is even better to get something out of it that will always be with you, a language.”

“The family, food, people, everything was just amazing!” concluded Gardner, speaking, it’s fair to say, for the entire group.

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