Excerpts from Jayna Stakoe's Letters Home:

Once in Madrid, I felt like I had landed in paradise!!! The city is beautiful: historically, architecturally, and culturally. It is located in the center of Spain, and is surrounded by the Sierra Mountain Range. It is home to overr five million people and is most well known for its exciting nightlife. I was taken to my new home, a small apartment, or piso as it is called in Spain. Here, I live with my Madre, Pepe, and brother, Louis. Louis' abuela, or grandmother, lives with us in the piso as well.

The different cultural customs and traditions of Spain have been both a joy and a frustration to discover. Though I can communicate in Spanish, it has been a struggle. I sometimes feel very childish when the simplest tasks are very difficult for me to accomplish. For example, I was 40 minutes late for my first day of classes because I couldn't explain to an angry and loud taxi driver where my school was. Everything has been a little bit more difficult for me here. Simple things like buying a mirror or developing film require me to look up several words and rehearse dialogues in my head over and over before I approach the store. Everything seems twice as difficult because of the language barrier and I find myself exhausted at the end of the day, my head aching and overflowing with irregular verbs!

The joys of my experience, on the other hand, have been worth every experience. In fact, it is the struggle that makes each small accomplishment more satisfying. Some of my small, but significant, accomplishments are: a nice dinner conversation with my family; finding a gym; bargaining wiht a storekeeper; and finding my way home after a long walk. Other, more momentous events have includded a 4-day trip to Malaga, a beautiful city on the Costa del Sol; attending a Real Madrid Futbol game; and several smaller trips outside of Madrid to a variety of neighboring cities.