A lot of guessing, by Emily Ramsey

When thinking back on Spain and my time living in Sevilla the first thing, I think of is the language. I had never taken Spanish before arriving in Spain so after meeting my host mom and realizing she spoke no English was a bit of a shock. I felt very ambitious to learn the language and be able to communicate. Although a different language was used more often in order for both my mom roommate and I to all communicate, the use of gestures and body language. A lot of acting was used when trying find a mutual understanding of what we were talking about. I can remember multiple times my host mom stood up in the middle of eating lunch to act out what she was trying to say or make silly noises. We often played a strange version of charades in order to figure out what was being communicated. A lot of guessing went into this tactic but it was pretty effective because we would never give up until we figured out what the other person was trying to say. Even if it meant taking our phones out and typing it into google translate. I remember one specific day when my roommate and I were telling our host mom we were going to the airport early the next morning. She went on to explain the Sevilla airport is small and we would get through security with no problem. She knew very quickly neither one of us understood by our confused faces so she popped up out of her seat and started to pretend to take her backpack off and put it on the security belt. We laughed a bit but ended up figuring out what she was trying to say.