Barcelona SAE

I LOVED Barcelona SAE. The program was awesome and really made it an amazing experience. My Spanish got so much better, and I met a lot of great people. The culture activities were really great!

During my internship with Barcelona Study Abroad Experience (Barcelona SAE), I gained much more than a few college credits. Since I completed this internship just one semester before graduating, I was able to apply my university education to real-life situations. Most of all, living and working in Barcelona challenged me to evaluate myself. I began to recognize my strongest qualities and how I can improve myself, both as a foreign language teacher and as a lifelong learner. As the first student from Missouri State to participate in Barcelona SAE’s internship program, I was very pleased with the entire process. After initial online applications and emails, I had a Skype interview with one of the program coordinators, Julianna, to talk about the types of work I would be most interested in doing while in Barcelona. My spoken Spanish proficiency level was evaluated during the interview, and we talked about my housing preferences as well. I could have chosen to rent an apartment with other Barcelona SAE participants or stay with a family in a home-stay. I chose a home-stay for the richer cultural experience. The pre-departure preparation I received from Barcelona SAE made me feel very confident and well-prepared for my upcoming trip. Once in Barcelona, I attended a really informative SAE orientation with other program participants. We got to meet the SAE team, get to know each other, tour some of the city, AND have a rooftop cocktail party! I then found the apartment where I’d be living for my five weeks in the city. The program arranged for me to stay with a widowed woman who lived in an apartment in a nice business and shopping district. She prepared my meals each day, told me about local events and customs, and taught me a lot about what it was like to live during Franco's dictatorship (all in Spanish, by the way!). The apartment was just a five minute walk from the nearest metro stop, which is how I commuted daily to my internship. Barcelona SAE coordinated my internship through a non-profit organization called EduRed. This non-profit offers free education to people who normally wouldn’t have access to it, especially Latin American immigrants in the area. I taught very beginning level English, but EduRed also offered career workshops, computer literacy, and personal image courses in other areas of Barcelona. They work along with other non-profit organizations to reach different parts of Barcelona and its surrounding communities. I was the first among the pioneering group of teachers that created the four-week English courses with EduRed. Each week, I met with the other interning teachers and with EduRed’s go-to linguist. Together we decided every week’s general curriculum, and then we independently designed our own daily lesson plans and activities. I spent a total of 60 hours teaching over the month, and several hours each week creating lessons and activities. Through trial and error, I learned about staying organized while preparing class lessons and materials; how to plan the correct amount of time for each activity and lesson; and how to effectively use the available resources in Barcelona, like office supply stores and copy shops. Negotiating all of this in a foreign language was an adventure in itself. The most important thing that I learned through completing this internship with Barcelona SAE and EduRed is that I have chosen a very rewarding career path. Teaching English abroad and working in international education is exactly what I want to do after graduating from Missouri State. I’m very confident that I have chosen a career that will enrich both my life and the lives of my future students, and I'm eternally grateful to Barcelona SAE for helping me realize that with their top-notch program.

There is no way to have a "most memorable experience" from those incredible six weeks. However, one of my favorite memories with the program was on the weekend trip to Valencia! It was great to see a different place in Spain and it's own history outside of Barcelona and also to get to know new people in the program. I would highly recommend the weekend trips and just exploring as much as possible! I wanted to go abroad but didn't really want to study because I already have enough credits so I was looking for a way to work abroad and this program seemed the best fit! I lived in a homestay in one of the nicer barrios (Saria) in Barcelona. I lived there with two other girls from the program and we all got along really well. We had a lot of issues with our host mom however and most of them stemmed from her not wanting to spend any money. We all had to share one load of laundry once a week which meant we didn't get all of our cloths washed. We also were suppose to be provided with breakfast and dinner but sometimes there wasn't enough food for all of us for breakfast and the dinners were "okay" at best. We had probably 6 different meals rotated over the 6 weeks and they were mostly just pasta or microwave dinners. We were very disappointed in her and recommended for her not to be used again. HOWEVER, we were the exception- everyone else I knew that was in a homestay absolutely loved their homestay!