Week 11: Overcoming and accepting my host situation

So, here I am: sitting in the same bed, typing on the same computer, in the same room as the first day I got here… 11 weeks ago. But somehow, I feel way different.

Succeeding the theme of my last blog, where I explained the stages of culture shock, I can honestly say this hasn’t exactly been a “4 month vacation” for me, rather I’ve been constantly learning, struggling, overcoming and changing as a person.

Sure, Spain has been great. I love the weather, the culture, the myriad of things to do, the lifestyle and even the food isn’t too bad. On the other hand, I’ve been going through stress that is completely unnecessary from my host situation, that I’ve finally overcome.

There are many things culturally different here which weren’t as obvious when I first arrived. For example, the family. It’s not abnormal for children to live with their parents until they’re in their thirties. It’s totally acceptable and part of the culture, which leads to why I believe I’ve been butting heads with my host mom for a while.

It took me awhile to see that while living with families in Spain, they’re just treating you the same way they would treat their own children. Especially for an older host mom like mine, she’s very traditional in her ways. She cooks and cleans which is great, but likes to dictate things in my life and give me her two cents about everything, which is probably exactly how she treated her children when they lived here.

I shrugged things off for as long as I could until I finally broke down and got teary-eyed to my director. It made me realize why this was happening to hear it explained from another Spaniard. Not to mention the support of Damaris and Katie that day—I sincerely thank you!

Damaris also pointed out that the meaning of being a woman and "independence" has a different meaning here than in the U.S. My host mom loves to cook, I don't. She doesn't drink, I do. She doesn't like that I go out sometimes at night, I say oh well. She calls me unorganized, but I know no one's perfect and I believe I'm quite organized. Maybe she's judging my "womanliness" by these factors. Do I care anymore, though? No. 

I have been taking their advice into consideration and it's changed the way I've reacted and felt, such as “why do you care what she thinks?” “you don’t have to like your host mom—think of it as a bad roommate situation at school” and finally, “you don’t have to do everything she tells you—just say no gracias. Estoy bien. No hace falta” (no thank you. I am fine. Don’t worry about it).

I won’t go into every detail about why I've been extraordinarily stressed about my host family, but I will lend some advice to those of you who plan to study abroad in the future: every host situation is different. Maybe you expect a motherly figure to tell you what you should do, or if you’re like me, that absolutely gets on your nerves. Maybe your personality fits perfectly with your host family, or maybe you’re so completely different that you can’t even fathom knowing these people if you weren't forced into this situation to begin with. Just do your best to understand the situation without letting it get to you, like I did.  

Finally, I realize now that I was completely misunderstanding the final stage of culture shock (acceptance). I thought I accepted the culture all along, until I realized it was the exact entity that was the root of my stress.

What I learned about my situation is that you and only you have the power to control your own happiness. If you focus your attention on the things that aren't making you happy like I was, you'll lose focus of what's important. 

To wrap up this blog, I'd like to conclude with a quote that is quite fitting: 

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”
-Dale Carnegie

Exploring the beautiful new places is a reminder of what makes me happy in Spain. This is a picture of the bridge connecting the shopping center in Barcelona.