CLASS TRIPS
From a Chaperone’s Perspective
9th-Graders Visit Spain by Emily Barth
THE 9TH-GRADE CLASS and their chaperones kicked off their grand adventure in Spain with a truly harrowing two days bustling between international phone calls and late-night shuttles and a string of flight delays. You could say the trip did not get off to a promising start. But our intrepid crew learned a valuable lesson about resilience and the power of positive thinking, because our troubles were forgotten from the instant we reached the Hotel Almijara and dipped our toes into the Mediterranean Sea. Our home base was the cozy coastal hamlet of La Herradura, which means “the horse-shoe” in Spanish, referring to the shape of the town’s coastline. We didn’t realize it at the time, but the first full day in Spain would set the tone for the rest of the trip in a number of ways. We did a lot of steep hiking and ate a lot of delicious food, and our brilliant local guides, Carlos and Marie-Josée, felt like family from the very beginning.
COMMUNITY SPIRIT To help us get our bearings, our guides led us on a walking tour from one end of town to the other on the first day. We got our first culture shock when we passed a house where an elderly woman sat in the shade of fruit trees in her front yard. Carlos stopped us and asked, “What do you think—would it be alright for us to ask this lady for some of her lemons? Is that something that you would do?” As a group, we Americans shifted around uncomfortably and muttered “no,” but to our surprise Carlos struck
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up a conversation with the woman (a complete stranger to him) and politely requested a lemon. She showered us with half a dozen, giving us not only a taste of fresh citrus, but also a taste of the generous community spirit of Mediterranean Spain. We strengthened our own sense of community with a nightly circle every evening, where we discussed the highlights and take-aways of the day’s ventures. Each mealtime also gave us an opportunity to reflect together and boost community morale. At first, we were a little put off by the sheer length of time allotted for every single breakfast, lunch, and late-night dinner, which lasted hours. But by the time the trip was over, some of us were thinking that we’d really miss the extra time for the companionship and leisurely conversation that comes with a long Spanish dining experience. As it turned out, the best way to overcome cultural barriers was to jump right in. A scavenger hunt on the second day of the trip challenged us to kick our Spanish skills into high gear. We took it out of the classroom and into the streets, where we had to ask local townspeople for directions and information using not only language skills but also a combination of body language, charades, and good humor. These, we learned, are the real keys to crosscultural communication. They came in handy later in the week when we visited a classroom full of Spanish teenagers in the neighboring town of Almuñécar. Nervous tension quickly gave way to enthusiastic new friendships once everyone began to realize how much they had in common.
