Sooooo, what exactly did I do for 4 weeks? I went for an intensive Spanish-program called MMLA (Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy), a program which I am pretty sure is funded by Middlebury College.
I took a flight from Houston to Atlanta to Albany, and drove for 2 hours to get to campus in a TINY one-street town called Poultney. The place is pretty okay, they have no shops but they have cute co-ops (places that sell all natural organic food, tea, etc from local farmers) and ONE regular supermarket, Shaw's.
I expected to learn a lot more grammar here so that I could skip a grade and improve my Spanish, but unfortunately I was placed in the lowest class with people who couldn't speak any Spanish (I have no problem with them, they're great) and we learnt pretty basic things.
I don't mean to be cocky or anything, but a lot of people who were in higher levels than me thought I belonged in a higher class (I agree....) but in the end when I took the assessment, I got the highest Intermediate level scores for Reading, Writing, and Speaking, even though I was literally placed in Spanish 0.
Most of my Spanish improved because of the "Palabra de Honor", the language pledge, a pledge that I signed to promise that I would speak solely in Spanish during my whole time @ MMLA. I was sort of forced into speaking the language, and my conversational Spanish and listening skills have definitely improved.
We learnt a lot about the culture of Spain and how to live and study abroad, etc, in a college. I had a roommate, Susannah, who's from Maine, who is totally awesome. She's lived in Peru before (what??) and she taught me a lot of past/future conjugations for Spanish verbs and she was an awesome roommate. We lived in a tiny room with two beds, two desks, a shared mirror, and 2 separate closets.
We only got to shower in the morning and I wore slippers EVERYWHERE, I was kind of anal about the dirt and stuff. All the Spanish students (like 70 of us) had to share 1 bloody laundry room, so there was always so much drama and fighting about the washing machines, so Susannah and I would wake up early to do our laundry (thank god she had Tidepods, I literally had NOTHING because i had to cram a month's worth of living things into a carry on luggage). Everything in Vermont is super green and clean and whatever and so of course the machines were environmentally friendly and took REALLY long to complete each cycle.
The food @ Green Mountain College was really great though, we had different food every morning, and I think that my favourite meals were the Chinese beef stir-fry and the pesto-chicken sandwiches. They had pretty suave ice cream as well (my fave flavour was cookie dough).
Oh my god. Literally the most INSANE thing happened. There was this huge ass thunderstorm which destroyed like ½ the campus. We all had to huddle and stay in the cafeteria for 4 hours even though there was a tile on the roof that was falling out (???). It was pretty crazy. Ok look at these photos.
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| The tree got bloody UPROOTED. |
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| A lot of telephone/electrical lines got messed up |
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| This made me really sad cause there was a whole field of trees where we would sit down and have picnics and play instruments during our free time but the shitstorm killed almost all the trees and they had to be removed because they were dangerous |
ANYWAY,
We had "Olympics", with events in swimming, dodgeball, a mummy-wrapping race, and musical chairs. I was in musical chairs and was the last Spanish kid left, but lucked out when some cocky asshole French dude shoved his way into my chair. I'm not even exaggerating. I was the only person who knew how to play musical chairs cause I was actually dancing and like having fun. Whatever. The Germans won (well, they had really good looking guys so I blame their good looks on being distracting) and they all had a weird obsession with a garden gnome, whatever I don't really understand it.
We also had a world "Expo", which was basically a showcase of all the languages (in this case, Chinese, French, Spanish, and German). The Chinese showcase was funny, I was glad I could understand everything. They sang my favourite song (月亮代表我的心) and "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys in Chinese, which was so cute. I sang "The Moon Song" from the movie "Her" on my friend's ukulele but translated in Spanish (the English version is on my sound cloud here).
At the end of the whole camp, they made us take 2 assessments online to kind of gauge our level of improvement. I tried taking this 4 times. Everytime we'd take it, the power or the internet would stop working. Eventually, we had to take the test off-campus (#smalltownprobz). It was just kind of funny how nature was like working with us cause everyone was pissed off about it.
Oh yeah, a lot of my friends were really pissed off about the whole camp experience. They didn't like it. Here's some photos of them + some fun bios I guess??
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| From left to right: Charlie who has an adopted sister, Rachel who likes to work out, Sam who got in trouble for sneaking out onto the roof at 3am to eat macaroni and going off-campus to a lake, Grace who had the most awful room mate and had an illegal sleepover in my dorm, Neil (the guy who's cut off) who's 13 but is pretty cool, Me, Micah who lives in Middlebury and plays the drums and piano, and Susannah! I gave her a nice intro already so I'm done now. |
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| From left to right: Rachel, Grace, Me, Julia! my friend who lives near NYC who literally had the most beautiful dorm room, Susannah, Julia! who shared a dorm with Alex and plays the piano and has a ghetto sounding boyfriend, and Zach! my friend who lives in North Hampton and has 4 moms. |
I made some really good friends. I mean, when you live in a shitty place together and complain about shitty things, a bond forms (right?).
But yeah basically it was a really fun experience, and I'm glad I made so many awesome friends from New England! Will continue to update my blog about Vermont and Boston, but bye for now! :-)
