Lynne Davis spent a fun-filled week in Mexico studying the Spanish language

If you go to another country to study, the best thing you can do is stay with a family.  It might be hard at first to move in with people you don't know, but you'll get used to it quickly - and the amount of language you learn will far outweigh any awkwardness you might feel.

I did it in 2004.  I went to Mexico to study Spanish for a week.  I admit that I was a little nervous about staying with a family, but I remembered a Taiwanese student who was almost fluent in English when she appeared in my beginners' English class.  When I asked her where she'd learned to speak so well, she told me that she had spent a couple of weeks with a family in a nearby city before coming to school.  I was impressed. 

I thought I'd be the only guest in the house in Mexico, but it turned out there were several others - three girls from Norway and an American, Tom.  When I arrived, they were eating the main meal of the day. 

Gradually, we became friends.  Tom was attending the same language school that I was, a few blocks down the street, so he became my guide.  He walked me to school the first few days.  He introduced me to the office staff and other students he'd met.  He showed me how to buy a tarjeta (phone card) and where to get the bus for downtown.  The girls from Norway were friendly too, but they soon graduated from their school and went to travel.

I was lucky, I realized, to be in this house.  Elena, the host mother, was kind and very organized; she had been taking in students for fifty years!  She gave us breakfast in the morning before sending us off to school, a big dinner (at 3:30 pm, an unusual time for me, but a true Mexican experience), and a small meal in the evening; if we were going out, she left a sandwich in our rooms.

Elena had a little breakfast room where we usually took our meals.  There was always fresh fruit - mangoes, strawberries - and there were frijoles (beans) almost every morning with our eggs, which she cooked in a variety of delicious ways.  She gave us bread too, not just the ubiquitous tortillas, but all kinds of other fresh breads.  She was a very good cook; we never went hungry.

When she had served us everything, Elena sat down and had coffee with us, and that was our chance to practice Spanish.

Even though Tom was in the beginner's Spanish class, he talked a lot, and he made us laugh with his wildly ungrammatical attempts at conversation.  I was intermediate, so sometimes I interpreted for him.  That was good for me.  It made me start talking too, and improving my Spanish.

Tom had a strong desire to learn, so he studied hard, and he took every opportunity to use the language, to talk to people.

He was bold and outgoing.  He made friends easily.  I was the opposite - good in the classroom, but shy on the street.  We made the perfect match!

One day I walked downtown with him to the mercato (market) to buy souvenirs.  He talked to everyone!  So I began to talk a little.  We took the bus home, and he struck up conversations with the people around him. 

They looked tired, as if they were on their way home from work.  I wouldn't have bothered them.  But that didn't stop Tom. 

I heard him ask a woman where she worked, and if she liked her job, and how much she made. How rude! I thought.

The woman answered all his questions, though, and they kept talking.  So I decided it was time for me to talk, too.  This was the way to learn.  If Tom could do it, with his stumbling Spanish, I could certainly do it too!

I turned to the woman next to me.  "Buenas tardes," I began, then asked her if she was on her way home from work. We had a nice conversation.  It was fun.

Tom did many things that at first seemed outrageous to me, but then seemed to be great ways to learn Spanish.  I began to realize that maybe the rules are different when the whole town is your textbook!

Tom made friends with Elena's grandson Ramon, a young man in his twenties.  One night he told me he was going to a movie with Ramon and his Norwegian girlfriend.  Would I like to go along?

Really?  I wondered if they had invited him under a feeling of obligation.  Was it really okay to join them?  I never in a million years could have done this on my own; they were my daughter's age!  But I went along.  And we had fun!  I saw parts of the city I didn't know existed.  I saw how the young people entertained themselves in the evening.  I watched a Johnny Depp movie in English with Spanish subtitles.  I learned the Spanish word for popcorn, palomitas.

Another night Tom told me he wanted to go and chat with the desk clerk at a local inn, or posado.  Again, I thought he was a little crazy, but again, it was a chance to do something I'd never do alone, so I went with him.  Tom asked him all kinds of questions, of course, about the business and the city and about his personal life.  I talked too.  It was amazing.

You have to become more flexible if you want to practice the language and learn something of the culture.  You have to take the opportunities that come.  Tom knew that, and I was learning it. 

Tom helped me a lot, and there were ways I could help him too.  He took me out in public and gave me the courage to speak to people; I helped him with his grammar and vocabulary.  I always carried a pocket dictionary on our excursions.  If I didn't know a word, I looked it up right then and there, and shared it with Tom.

He laughed when I bought comic books at a newsstand, but I showed him how useful they were for learning colloquial Spanish.

At night we went back home, to our temporary mother.  She listened as we told her our adventures.  She gave us advice and information about the town.  And she told us about her life.  We were a happy little family, Elena, Tom, and I.  Sometimes Elena's husband Alfredo, semi-retired, made an appearance and chatted with us too.

After a week, my classmates who were staying in apartments were amazed.  My Spanish was becoming fluent.  It was because of my homestay at Elena's and Tom, the buddy that I met there.  They made all the difference.

If you are going to study in a foreign country, you might want to live in a dormitory with other students.  That's a good experience.  But if you get the chance to stay with a family, even for a week, I recommend it. 

Lynne Davis taught for over 15 years at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale