This year, students enrolled in Spanish four and five at Marblehead High School have the opportunity to participate in a cultural exchange with students from Bilbao, Spain. 26 students from Marblehead and 16 students from Bilbao signed up to participate in the exchange. The Spanish students came to Marblehead first; they arrived on Saturday, December 1 and left before school on Thursday, December 13. Over February break, the Marblehead students participating will go to Bilbao for a little over a week to stay with the families of the students they hosted.
I am one of the students participating in the exchange and one of the people from Marblehead who hosted a student. The past two weeks have been crazy. The students from Bilbao are all around sixteen years old, and have a few more years of experience speaking English than the majority of the Marblehead students have speaking Spanish. For many of them, English is their third language- their first being Basque and their second Spanish. My exchange student told me that she began learning Spanish at age four and English at age ten but prefers Basque out of the three. Bilbao is located in the Basque Country, where people speak Basque as their first language. Basque does not have Latin roots like Spanish does, and is not linguistically similar to other European languages. According to the students from Bilbao, their classes are conducted in Basque; how the Marblehead students are going to understand their teachers on days that we accompany them to school, I do not know.
It was very interesting to see the students’ English improve wildly in the short time they were here. From drawing on my limited knowledge and the vast knowledge of Google translate, my exchange student was able to learn many new words in English. Likewise, it was a wonderful way for the American students to improve their Spanish skills before going to Spain. I personally learned many new words in Spanish and feel more confident speaking the language with my exchange student and her friends than I did before this experience.
We were all sad to see our new friends leave on Thursday. While students may have fallen behind on their homework and sleep, the memories they made were worth it. People brought their exchange students to Jingleball, to LaserQuest, to Casa Corona, to Boston to ice skate, and even to Market Basket and Walmart. I watched as my exchange student and her friend discovered the wonders of Dunkin Donuts, and I tried my best to prevent them from eating a half-dozen in one sitting.
French students have had the opportunity to participate in a week-long cultural exchange for years, and I am thrilled that the school has extended the opportunity to Spanish learners. The past two weeks were incredible, and I think that we are all more than excited to go to Spain in February.