Senior Nate Truman had barely recovered from 36 hours of traveling from Minnesota to Spain when his host sister left him alone at a metro station without any clue as to what was going on.

“So what happened was my Spanish was really terrible,” he said.

Turns out, Truman had mistaken the Spanish words for club, discoteca, for the Spanish word for library, biblioteca. So when he thought his host sister was inviting him to study at the library, she really meant that he could go out clubbing while she studied by herself.

At 2:00 a.m. and after spending several hours partying, Truman finally got a hold of his host sister to pick him up.

That night was only the beginning of Truman’s nine months in Spain.

The early stages

The summer of Truman’s sophomore year, he and his family had been driving up north for vacation when the idea to study abroad came up. “Hey Nate, if you like Spanish so much, you might really like going for a semester or a year in Spain,” his father had said.

After a weekend of consideration, Truman announced his decision on the car ride back home.

Upper School Spanish teacher Rolando Castellanos supported Truman throughout the experience. “I thought that that would be amazing to have someone like him who in my opinion enjoys learning language to actually do that,” he said.

“Señor Castellanos really fostered a real passion for the Spanish language [and] the Spanish culture that was really, really powerful for me,” Truman said.

Truman has been at St. Paul Academy and Summit School since first grade and wished to meet new people in a new setting.

He was initially nervous about his lack of experience with the Spanish language. In the School Year Abroad program that Truman was with, a majority of the students had taken Spanish for six or seven years, while Truman only had two years. “In English… it doesn’t require active thought just to understand what’s going on around you and when it does, it’s incredibly exhausting,” he said.

Establishing new friendships was also a challenge. “Diving into a new place where you know no one is very intimidating because you’re dealing with people who you have no history with,” Truman said, “which is very uncommon here at SPA.”

“It was both the thing I was seeking and the thing I was worried about,” he said.

Nine months away from home

Truman stayed with a lower-middle class Cuban family of three in Zaragoza, Spain. His host sister was his age and went to a local school. “You’re dealing with a socioeconomic group that is completely different from that people who are here [at SPA].” he said. “[It] gave me an entirely different perspective on how people live, on how people think, how people value family, [and] how people value money.” He discovered that money didn’t affect happiness, and “it was sort of an eyeopening experience.”

Truman attended an American school with students from all over the United States. The students had to speak Spanish at all times, except in English and math classes, which were taught in English.

The city where Truman lived, Zaragoza, is approximately the same size as the Twin Cities and located in northeastern Spain. The lack of tourists allowed the students to avoid English-speaking environments that were abundant in larger cities like Barcelona and Madrid.

When Truman first arrived, he felt “overwhelmed,” he said, a feeling that would persist for over a month. Luckily, Truman’s Spanish skills improved dramatically over the course of the year. “As the year went on, I grew more and more comfortable with the language,” he said. Soon, he could hold a conversation as well as his classmates.

When SPA students went on the exchange trip to Spain last March, Truman met up with them. He also stayed in contact with Castellanos through Skype. “It was great to see him become a very confident young man with a very impressive command of the language and having grown and matured to be a very well balanced individual,” Castellanos said.

One aspect of Spanish life that Truman noticed was the approach people had to working. “They take a much more relaxed standpoint,” he said. “You work, but you do it slowly over the course of the day. You punctuate it with a lot of breaks.” He also witnessed how Spanish culture was very socially and family oriented.

Coming back

Returning to Minnesota juxtaposed the two worlds to allow for some reflection. “There is maturity, open mindedness, [and] a wider perspective that I have now that I didn’t have when I left the U.S,” Truman said.

The first few weeks at SPA felt strange, if not difficult, for Truman. “You go out the bubble that is SPA, and you have to come back into it,” he said.

“I responded to the question ‘How was Spain?’ probably fifty times last week,” he said, referring to the first week of school.

Part of the challenge of coming back included figuring out new dynamics with his friends, his teachers, and the school community in general. “[For] most of seniors here, their big adventure coming up is going to college,” Truman said. “I’ve already been away from home, [and] I’ve already done a lot of the things that hold that excitement that people are looking forward to.”

Still, Truman values his experience abroad and looks forward to the future. Traveling by himself and living in an environment where he couldn’t regularly speak English has allowed him to “come out the other side stronger and better,” he said.

Castellanos agreed. “He impresses as an individual who embraces challenge and opportunity,” he said.

To read about a day in Truman’s life in Spain, go here.