Here, I want to introduce you all to Martín, who was my host brother when I was here in high school and has remained a very close friend of mine ever since. After I lived with his family in the fall of 2016, he came to spend the subsequent summer with my family in Hastings, and he returned two summers later to be a program facilitator for the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute in Irvington. Given that we have both spent a lot of time in the U.S. and Spain, I find that we often have similar perspectives on cultural exchange and the distinctions between the two countries. It is always interesting to hear more about his experiences and how he understands them in relation to common American experiences. In this short interview (which was conducted in Spanish and subsequently translated into English), I asked him a bit about his life in Spain. In his answers, I think that you can see a very clear disparity between his experience as a college student and mine. Although he is a student, since he lives at home (which the vast majority of students do here) and works so much outside of class, his identity as a college student is less central to him than mine was to me at Bowdoin (and to what I think is common in America). I don't want to speak for him too much, so I'll let his answers tell you more!
