An aspect of Spanish culture that I had to adjust to were the behaviors of how late the local people ate meals. Typically, the people would eat lunch around 2-3pm and would not eat dinner until 8-10pm. This was an adjustment compared to how early people in America typically eat meals, but living with a host mom helped make this adjustment easier and immerse myself in that aspect of the culture. This is because she would have meals prepared ahead of time, so I could eat when I wanted, so I was able to slowly adjust and keep pushing meals to later times. Also, even going out to eat, the kitchens were not open until 8pm for dinner, so the option of eating early was not available. It did not take long to adjust to these time differences living with a host family since lunch is a bigger meal than dinner and seen as more important. This was different from the culture in the US with dinner being the bigger meal of the day, but I learned to enjoy this cultural difference. An experience I had that shows this difference is when another student in my program and myself wanted to grab a drink at a local restaurant around 3pm, and sat down, but were told we could only sit if we wanted to eat lunch. In Spain, lunch is typically 3 courses, and we had already eaten, so we had to move and could not find a place to grab a drink since lunch is very important to their culture. After three months in Spain, I actually enjoyed having a bigger lunch and smaller dinner each day since you had all day to digest rather than going right to bed after a big meal. Overall, I was not expecting to experience a difference in the times that meals took place, but it was easy to adjust to. Also, this would be a shock to other Americans since we are typically used to eating earlier and placing a bigger importance on dinner rather than lunch. This difference was also very apparent since the first day I arrived in Spain since the portions for dinner are smaller and lunches consist of multiple courses and larger portions. Based on this experience, I will definitely acknowledge and appreciate differences such as meals and the times they take place since this was not something I was expecting, but truly learned to enjoy. Also, I have acknowledged these differences back home in my own culture, where I did not recognize them before. Furthermore, I plan to travel more after this experience, since it was my first time outside of the United States, and I truly feel that I adjusted very easily and felt happy during my time abroad. I am already planning on going back to Spain either to work or for graduate school because of how much I loved the people and culture in Spain. This experience truly opened my eyes to how many experiences and opportunities are out there outside of the United States and grew my love for wanting to experience these opportunities.
