Homestay

From the personality clash to the poor food and small quantities of food served, homestay was an issue. I recommend staying away from homestay as apartment gives more freedom and more space. I did not get along with my house mom and it made the entire experience rocky. My roomate and I are 20 year old guys that eat a lot and we made that apparent, but the quantity of food that was prepared for us never sufficed. I lost 6 pounds while being abroad. I´ve also heard of friends that lost 10-15 pounds due to the lack of food available in the homestay. Also, we were not allowed to use the kitchen to even prepare our own food so we were handcuffed. I wanted to buy food to keep in the house and cook if I were hungry but was denied permission to by my house mom. Also, we were not allowed to shower during the day which did not make sense. Something small like this becomes a huge inconvenience when there is no reason to be enforcing this ridiculous rule. Also, dinner is at a strict time. If you are out enjoying a Barca game or a drink with friends and cannot be home for dinner time, you have to cancel and you´re left to your own devices to feed yourself which means more money spent. I spent half of my time at a friend´s apartment wishing that I would´ve chose that living option. For some reason, homestay is more expensive than the apartments which shouldn´t be because my house mom clearly did not spend a lot of money on my roomate and I. Up to this point this review is strictly about the homestay living accomodation because that is the only major issue I encountered while abroad. Everything else about this program was amazing and exceeded expectations. The trips and events were amazing and the staff was phenomenal. When you´re thousands of miles from home it´s comforting to have a staff that genuinely cares. I would definitely recommend this program to any student wishing to study abroad, you will not be disappointed. Some of my friends got lucky and were blessed with an amazing homestay family. They ate until full and conversed with a large family on the regular. My house mom was a single women that lives with cats, just something to keep in mind. I would recommend staying away from homestay, unless you have a specific reason to choose one, because it´s a toss up whether it will be enjoyable or not.