Intercambio

One of the things that our program recommends we do while in Madrid is an intercambio, which is a language exchange with a Spaniard who is trying to learn English.  The goal is for you to meet with them and talk half in English and half in Spanish in order to improve both our speaking and listening proficiency.  During the crazy apartment-hunting time at the beginning of the semester, one of our helpers mentioned that she wanted to speak English with us in order to practice, but wasn't allowed.  We got along quite well and decided to do an intercambio once the apartment madness settled down.  Now, we meet almost every week (I'm gone a lot as you may have noticed) for two hours and just chat.  It's super fun - we use it as a chance to try out new restaurants or cafés, and we have a lot in common which makes nonchalantly talking for two hours not a problem at all.

Her name is Irene (pronounced ee-ren-ay) and she is from Logroño, which is a small city in the north of Spain and she's in her last year of studying translation at a university just outside of Madrid.  Her first foreign language is French, in which she is totally fluent as far as I can tell. But she has also been studying English for quite a few years, and as a student of translation, she understands the language perfectly and in general her only hiccups come from pronunciation and fluidity in spoken language.  She is also studying Japanese now, if the three languages weren't enough.  She just got a job (which is a miracle in Spain) with a translation agency, so she has been doing that while finishing up her classes, so there are few windows in which we're both available to hang out for a couple hours.

During our conversations we talk about cultural differences between Spain and the US, grammar questions that we have, politics, school, travel, and just life in general.  You don't realize how stressed it makes you to speak Spanish all of the time until you are with someone who is on an even playing field with you, and it feels so great to ask questions that you've always thought were too dumb to say out loud, like "what is the difference between perdón and perdona?"

Being friends with Irene has been one of my favorite parts of being in Spain, because it has proven to be quite challenging to make friends with Spaniards given my lack of direct interaction with them.  I'm not sure if there are things like this in bigger cities, but they are such a great way to mix cultures, make friends, and learn a language.