When Leo Flores arrived in Madrid, he didn’t have a place to stay. “I knew I could figure out housing more easily once I got to Madrid, and I just went with the first option I found,” said Flores, who now lives in Argüelles with 17 roommates. He already knows some of them will be lifelong friends.
With ancestral roots in Spain and Spanish as his first language, Flores had always dreamed of studying abroad in Madrid. Walking the city’s streets, speaking Spanish daily, and reconnecting with people he knew in Madrid made him excited about his four months of studying abroad.
“It’s been a refreshing change to have to speak Spanish consistently,” Flores said.
Flores’s story is one of many study abroad students in Madrid this semester. At SLU Madrid,
there are over 450 students studying abroad. From navigating public transportation to weekend trips with mere acquaintances, these students have made meaningful friendships and gained
skills that will shape their future.
For some, acclimating means adjusting to cultural differences, such as the slower pace of life or the late and long meal times. For other students, it is navigating the language barrier.
Chisa Matsuo, a senior from Nagoya University of Foreign Studies in Japan, has studied abroad before.
When reflecting on Madrid, she said, “It’s so different from the high-pressure, always push, push, push culture of Japan.”
Matsuo has studied in both the US and London, but her experience in London left her thinking about Japan throughout her year there.
She has come to fully appreciate all the happy times in Madrid because of the hard times in England. She believes it is always worth enduring hard times and navigating challenges to ultimately find her community. In contrast, Madrid has made her happy, and she credits her challenging times in England.
On sunny afternoons, Matsuo enjoys walking because the city feels more upbeat than her time in London.
Joanna Ma, a third-year pre-physical therapy student from the University of Richmond, credits getting lost in Munich as her first moment of reflection on her study abroad experience.
Her eSIM stopped working, which left her lost in Munich, Germany.
If she had been in Madrid, she realized, she would have known what to do. She would know that she could take any metro line with a stop that corresponds with a line that takes her an 8-minute
walk from her apartment. She uses the metro daily to travel to SLU Madrid, with her favorite metro stop being Tirso de Molina.
Given her tight academic requirement schedule and having to think about easily transferable
credits when applying to grad school, SLU was the best university to accommodate her needs, given it is an American University.
“During my recent travels, I realized how I found a home in Madrid,” said Ma.
For Emily Hearn, her friend Hannah, who immigrated from Venezuela, sparked her desire to learn Spanish. She has been able to practice in school, on a volunteer trip to Honduras, and volunteering at her local free health clinic.
She was ecstatic to be able to improve her Spanish over four months in Madrid. She now uses Castellano rather than the Spanish of other countries because she feels she has a true identity here.
“Not all phrases translate directly from English to Spanish, but whenever I learn a new Spanish phrase, I incorporate it in a conversation within 24 hours,” Hearn said.
She finds herself going up to people her age to practice her Spanish and has met people from countries like Mexico, Chile, and Spain.
“Living in Madrid has given me a deeper connection to the language, and I have a real identity here,” Hearn said.
After completing her first semester of college abroad, Robyn Garnock believes she can do anything. The hardest part was not knowing if she would be homesick in a foreign country.
“This experience has made me seriously consider transferring to a school abroad after a year or two at Northeastern,” Garnock said.
Garnock has been able to have a successful conversation in Spanish at the end of the semester, which felt impossible in August. She has even been exploring the possibility of being an au pair one summer to continue to live abroad.
Colleen Ann Cowalski, a third-year permanent SLU main campus student in the physical therapy program, could only go abroad this specific semester. She’s also a twin who also goes to SLU.
“It was strange celebrating my birthday without my twin this year because he studied abroad at SLU Madrid last semester,” Cowalski said.
Cowalski said that she felt that she had the best idea of what to expect, given her brother’s experience and how many of her friends had studied at SLU Madrid in the past.
Allie Frizzell has been living with a host family, giving her a unique perspective on the lives of Madrid residents. Learning Spanish in an intimate home setting has been an experience she will never forget.
“There is not the same sense of individualism that exists in the United States. It’s all about family and community. It is not an exclusive energy that many other cities bring to the table, which makes it super easy to acclimate,” said Frizzell.
