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I'm Bethany St. Martin
I'm majoring in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
and Spanish
and I studied abroad in Venezuela.
Jumping right into this daily life filled
with Spanish was challanging
even though I knew Spanish pretty well
it was still like all the time.
The cool thing is though that as time
went on I was a lot more comfortable with the Spanish
and it was much easier and it was
really cool because I could tell wow
I'm actually improving, it's actually working.
Academically I went into it thinking
this might be a little easier,
but it wasn't easy.
The academics, they were all upper
division Spanish courses and so they
were all taught in Spanish.
All of my teachers spoke only Spanish
and if they did know English they didn't tell us.
Really we only had class Monday through Thursday
usually only two classes a day.
I had a history class, so I learned all about
the history of Venezuela and my host family
loved helping me with that homework.
But it was a lot of reading and a lot of writing
but it was just like here where you have to
do your part outside of class
and you have to pay attention and
be involved.
I'm in a lot of activities here on campus now
that involve Spanish and
not only is it due to my Spanish interest
it's also because now I feel more outgoing
like I'm more likely to try some clubs out
that maybe beforehand I wouldn't have.
I lived with a host family and they
treated me like a daughter to them
and I still talk to them all the time.
I had a host mom and a host sister
and a host brother.
I also got to live with two American roommates as well
so there was three of us Americans living in one house
so that was kind of cool.
One of the girls I lived with only spoke English
she didn't know any Spanish going into it
so I was kinda the translator a lot of the times
so kinda it was practice for me.
They live the happy life I guess
so it seemed less stressful at times
maybe because I was studying abroad.
Socially it was super awesome because not only
did I get to go with a group of Americans
from the U of M
I also got to meet a lot of Venezuelans.
Every weekend, even every weekday we
were hanging out with Venezuelans our age
and going to soccer games
and going dancing or going out to eat
so it was really fun.
Camping in the Andes Mountains
was super cool.
We hiked way up into the mountains
and it was the most beautiful thing ever.
We went with some Venezuelan friends
so we had campfires and talked in Spanish
and sang in Spanish
and had a good time.
I went on a trip to different part of Venezuela.
It was to this place called Los Llanos.
That's where they have a lot of animal life.
We got to see an anteater and I got
to see an anaconda
and hold it
which seems scary but it was so cool
and then we also got to go fishing for
piranhas and then eat them
so that was something I don't
think I'll ever do again.
We went with like a tour guide
It was just a small group of us Americans
and there was three of us riding on top of a jeep
because we were on a safari
and it was close to the end of our trip
and my friend and I were talking about how
sad we were to leave
and our tour guide, he told us
"no you can't be sad that you're leaving
you have to be thankful for this experience"
and it just made me think
oh my gosh why am I freaking
out about leaving
I am so lucky for being
able to do this and I've learned so much.