Parents’ Visit

Two weeks before Easter, my parents, brother, and grandpa came to Zaragoza to visit me and go on vacation. This turned out to be a unique experience because my host mother invited them all over for lunch twice and as they don’t speak Spanish and my host mom and sister don’t speak English, I translated everything.

Sure, I’d translated things on the spot before but this was completely different because it was constant for about 2 hours each time. My headaches returned during those few days because I was being forced to think in two languages at the same time. I’m glad I got to do something like that, though, because it forced me to think more quickly in Spanish even though I spoke to the wrong person in the wrong language a few times. I guess that’s one of the perils that come with translating.

Germany

The week of Easter, I traveled with my family from Zaragoza to southwestern Germany to visit some family friends. My senior year of high school, we hosted an exchange student from Germany and we went to visit him and his family. The region we went to is known for its wine and that’s the primary industry there. The whole area is filled with small towns that are so close to each other that many times you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.

Even though the area isn’t touristy, it has a really nice country atmosphere that’d be good to visit just to relax. I’m so glad I finally got to visit my “other family” as well as have my family visit me in Spain. It was sad to leave everyone in Germany but knowing that I’ll see them soon was comforting. While we were there, we also went to a larger city called Freiburg. It’s a little more touristy than out in the country but not much. It’s an interesting city with lots of typical German architecture and there are also little streams that run along the sides of all the streets that are often associated with Freiburg. I was told there are streams because they have a lot of springs under the ground and the water needs to go somewhere.

After returning to Zaragoza after speaking only English for a week and translating between the two the week before, my Spanish was much worse, needless to say. My host mom even told me that she noticed it was worse than before I left and understandably so. If I had forgotten that much after just 2 weeks, I shudder to think what my Spanish will be like after this next semester as I’m not taking another Spanish class until spring semester 2013.

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