As I reflect on my time in Spain, the aspect that I come back to over and over again is how magical it was to live in another language culture… and actually understand and communicate with the people in Spanish, day-in and day-out.
When I was little, I was obsessed with secret languages. My friend Sage, who lived down the street, and I made up a secret language called SAS (Sophie and Sage… or Sage and Sophie, depending on who you asked) and we’d use it to write each other letters that we would leave in homemade mailboxes at one another’s houses. Mine was a Kleenex box tied to my actual mailbox with some sparkly purple ribbons and hers was a Tupperware that we duct taped to her bedroom windowsill (luckily she lived on the first floor!).
While I don’t write notes in code to my friends any more, living in Spain had the same sense of magic that SAS had when I was little. There was no one with whom I could speak English in Córdoba, so every conversation I had was an opportunity to practice Spanish – to learn new vocabulary and to get used to the vosotros form. It was hard (I’m not going to lie) but also one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had because you really do improve your language skills that way and noticeably so.
