Know exactly what you want to do

I decided to use Barcelona SAE to give myself an opportunity to work abroad. I wanted to see what the tourism and hospitality industry was and how to run it effectively. I decided to pay extra to live with a Spanish family to further use my Spanish that I had been studying for a long time.

I was assigned to work with a hostel booking agency and I was excited to learn more about the company and what my responsibilities would be. I was disappointed that all they expected of me was to write blogs in English about places I had never been to. I mentioned that I was fluent in Italian and they had me translate parts of those webpage into Italian. I felt frustrated that I was not learning anything about the hospitality industry and I was bored as I listened in to conversations between my coworkers in Catalan.
Perhaps the bar was set low by the previous interns. After all it was explained to me near the end of my internship that I was the first intern they had ever had that spoke Spanish. My internship was overall a waste of money as I learned little since I could have done all of the tasks required of me from my home and the educational part of the internship was never apparent even though I was friends with my coworkers and we got along well.

It should be noted that I did contact Barcelona SAE and they helped me get more responsibility but the improvement was minimal.

I don't really know who is to blame for this, it could be me for having higher expectations from a 20 hour a week internship. Or it's just the fact that I went to Spain for the internship, not for Spain.
My living arrangements were okay. My bedframe was literally held together by tape. It didn't break at any point, luckily. I didn't expect air conditioning since I had lived in the Mediterranean for two years and I know it's a luxury item. But I did expect a fan. I had to ask for one once summer hit full force. The fan given to me was the size of my fist. It was a small room (at 5'6" I'm not tall but I barely had room to do push-ups) but the entire time I was there there was a larger fan that was not available for me to use because it was "dirty". I offered to clean it myself but they said I couldn't use it. Also, the son of the family who lived accros the hall from me smoked like a chimney for the first two or three weeks. I had to ask them to stop. I shouldn't have to ask as that is one of our rules for our host families.
Our breakfast and dinners were provided for us by our hosts but we had to fend for ourselves for lunches. I was allowed to store some things in the fridge but not allowed to use anything in the kitchen to cook. I like to cook. I could have saved a lot of money were I able to use the kitchen.
I had roommates that lived with me in the place and I would say that they were the highlights of my experience. We went places together and spent time together. We were good friends.