Second Family

Jessica: About three years ago I went and I lived in Madrid for a year and I stayed with a host family, and there was three boys: one was my age, one was two years younger, and one was, at the time he 9 years old, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I stayed in a city outside of Madrid, it's called Alcola de Hernades , and it's about a 30 minute train ride from Madrid, from downtown Madrid. In, I also went to school Monday to Friday. I went to a Spanish International language school, and so I went to class with Brazilians, French, German, Turkish, and so that was really good for my Spanish just because I was able to practice without having the ability to speak English, so my Spanish greatly improved, just from my friends, having to communicate to properly with them. My host family like I said was really wonderful. I would take the little one, Javi, my little brother, out a lot, we would go on what we called our citas , which is dates, so I would ask him where he wanted to go for our date and he would tell me, you know, like, in Madrid he wanted to see, one time we went to a wax museum, so he was able to vist the city which he did not have a lot of opportunity to do before that, so with the help of Javi and his host Mom, I was able to like thoroughly enjoy my Spanish experience and improve my Spanish as well.