Dancing with the Mop: Lessons Learned from Studying Abroad

Photo: Museo Nacional del Prado

By Bethy Hardeman, follow her blog on Yahoo!

I walked out of my third- floor apartment in Madrid, Spain to the sound of Antonio's birds chirping above me. I looked up after shutting the door to see Antonio himself cleaning in the hallway. He looked up and a smile crept across his chubby face.

"What are you doing, Antonio?" I asked in Spanish.

He stopped his cleaning briefly and smiled bigger. "I'm dancing," he said, winking, "dancing with the mop." He immediately swooped the mop up in his arms and commenced a funny little dance, humming merrily as he did so.

That was my study abroad experience. It wasn't filled with loud dorm rooms full of other American students or large universities packed to the brim with English-speaking young people. No, my experience involved a small language school in the center of Madrid, weekend adventures around Europe and, of course, friendly Spanish faces.

My program at Tandem, Madrid kept me on my toes with classes taught completely in Spanish. Apart from an intensive language course each day, we could also choose from a variety of cultural classes, such as Art and Architecture and Spanish Film. Through my Art and Architecture class, I enjoyed taking walks with colleagues through old and new sections of the city, exploring the architecture we were studying in person.

Excursions around Europe during my study abroad semester allowed me to experience culture outside of the classroom. I learned how to travel independently, despite limited language knowledge, travel frugally by staying in hostels and going by train, and travel thoroughly by experiencing destination cities by foot and immersing myself in the culture.

But at the end of the day, my favorite part about studying abroad was the people I met there. Antonio was the doorman of my apartment building. When not "dancing with the mop," he could be found sitting at the front desk, building a wooden cage for his birds. He would inevitably stop me to pull out a picture of the biggest fish he ever caught, proudly pointing out how large it was. And then there was Jaime, my language exchange partner. We didn't just get together to help each other with our pronunciation. Jaime gave me a real-life language learning experience when he took me car shopping one afternoon. Then there were of course my fellow students at Tandem. Since many of them didn't speak English well, we could only communicate effectively by practicing our Spanish together. I learned how to properly drink beer from a German dentist and how to have fun doing just about anything with friends in the city from a skinny French student. But most of all, I learned how to be confident in speaking the language that will always have my heart: Spanish.