LITA: A Pretty Life Changing Experience

I had an incredible experience traveling to Spain and living with a family there through the LITA Program. The program is uniquely small and only does trips to Spain which means that you receive a lot of individual attention. This is very nice when faced with the difficult yet incredibly rewarding task of being totally immersed in the Spanish culture. It can be overwhelming to all of a sudden be living with a new family that only speaks Spanish and lives in a part of the world you have never been to before. However, LITA prepares students very well for the language barrier, culture shock, and other challenges that they will face living abroad. Once students are living with their host families they are in for a very special and pretty life changing experience. LITA puts students in small and rural Spanish towns so students will get to know not only their host families but also the surrounding community and all the kids who live in the town. Furthermore, the fact that these are rural towns means that the majority of people in the town don't speak English. This forces students to become totally immersed in the Spanish culture and use Spanish almost 100% of the time. Being forced to use Spanish greatly improved my understanding of the language and made my experience much more authentic. Living in a small community also allowed me to form strong relationships with many people from Spain some of whom I am still in contact with today almost 2 years later. By the end of the trip I had a much greater understanding of Spanish. I also looked at the world in a much different way as a result of my experiences. LITA is a very rigorous experience but it is more than worth it in the end. The program definitely changed how I see the world and gave me some of the best memories of my life. This is an incredible program and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a passion for Spanish and a passion for adventure.