In the exchange project of Erasmus Europe, there are three destinations to which you can be send to. Spain, England, and Italy. The coordinators decide to which country you’ll go. This is all decided by the best matches in different countries. This means that you go to the country that has the best match to you. The matches are decided on behavior, male or female, hobbies etc. For example: my first choice was England, second Spain, and third Italy. But the match was better with Spain than the other countries. So they decided to send me to Spain.
I’m glad about the fact that I’m in this host family. They are very nice and friendly. The family itself consist of four members. Father called: Pascual, mother called: Ria, daughter called: Adriana, and my match (son) called Jaime. Ria has emigrated to Spain for about 32 years ago from Holland, so I also can talk dutch to her when I don’t understand something. The family already experienced the exchange project because Adriana also participated on this project. She went to Holland and now also can talk pretty well dutch. The family already knows how to do this, which is very nice.
The village where I live is called El Encinar. It is located 20 km away from the beautiful city Salamanca. Salamanca itself is 250 km from madrid away, near wards Portugal, to the south. The village itself consists of approximately 20 big buildings with apartments in it, a bakery, a school, a swimming pool, sport applies, and a supermarket. Because of the fact that everything is so small, almost everybody knows each other and the ties are very closed. The apartment in which I live is small, but all the necessities are there. The apartment is about 6 by 6 meters , and has 3 bedrooms, one kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room. And because of the fact that there are only 3 bedrooms, jaime gave his bedroom to me and now sleeps on the balcony (with windows).
The surroundings of the village varies a lot. Within a drive of 20 min you’re in the beautiful city of Salamanca. Salamanca is a relative small city with a lot of big old buildings from the romans. There aren’t too much tourists, but there are enough nice activities and sight-seeings in the city. However, the nature around Salamanca is very different than in the Netherlands. It is pretty flat and yellow everywhere, while it’s still located on 900 meters hight. But within an hour there are very big green mountains, which makes the variety very big.
In the last weekend of the summer holiday, me and my family already met the host family. It was very nice to see my host family and their livelihood before I’m actually leaving to Spain. We first stayed three days in Madrid and after that we also went to Salamanca and the host family three days.