If you have never had the experience of trying to adapt to a new lifestyle in a country that doesn’t speak your language, you won’t realise how even easy everyday tasks can become incredibly difficult.
The stress can change your overall excitement into a nightmare, so going down the route of seeking support from those ‘in the know’ is definitely the way to go.
You could take one of three routes for your booking your Spanish learning experience:
- Approaching the university directly which, from what I have already stated,
may not be the easiest route to take. - Use an organisation like UniSpain to book your university course for you, as this will take the pressure off you as regards to trying to handle the foreign language and make you confident that you got your message across correctly.
- Go down the route of Go Study Spain, who will also take the pressure off you in the booking stage and top that with a fully-tailored package of free activities (e.g. culture, visits of interest, local cuisine etc.), to complement the learning received in class.
So, when trying to immerse yourself in a culture and a language which are both new to you, and learn at the same time, the complete package solution is the right option for many students.
Package support for language courses starts at the very beginning, when the thought of going off to Spain is nothing more than a sprouted seed. Go Study Spain lead you by the hand, stopping at what, to you, may seem a crack in the road, to help you negotiate the safest step to take next. What more could you want than that?
The package starts by identifying the right course for you in the right part of Spain.
A course could be twenty classes a week over a chosen number of weeks or, depending on the chosen location, twenty five classes a week and, once the correct location and course for your needs have been identified, the next step is finding suitable accommodation.
While student accommodation can quite often be of a low quality, Go Study Spain have identified the cream of student flats, host families and individual flats, all within easy reach of where you will be studying. This gives you the comfort of knowing that you will be in a safe area and that your living needs are already in place.
Before setting off on your journey to Spain, your contact will sort out necessary insurance cover, your student ID card, a mobile phone for your use in Spain and also an international phone card, for phoning home at the most economic rate.
You will also be given an emergency contact number, which will be available every hour of your stay and, in a land where you don’t yet speak the language, some easy tasks can at first feel like emergencies in the making. You should now have a very comfortable feeling about the quality service you are receiving via your package program and so getting on the plane will feel like the start of a very positive Spanish experience.
Landing at your chosen airport, you already have a friend in your personal contact, who will take you to your chosen accommodation, which will have been booked to cover a few days either end of your course dates, to allow for both orientating yourself with your new home at the beginning of your stay and saying goodbye to new friends at the end.
Those settling in days will include a guided tour of your place of study, so that you have a head start with knowing the layout of the land and can already make general friendly chit chat about the best pubs, restaurants and places of interest. Such a tour also gives you that feeling of belonging, during which time you might identify a friendly coffee shop, or a gathering of people who made you feel immediately welcome.
Go Study Spain will be with you on your enrolment day and will feed you through the process of understanding the education system that you will be involved in but they also appreciate the need to enjoy activities outside the classroom and so they will have planned both local activities and also excursions outside your city of choice.
Trips to local museums and restaurants, mixing with the locals, as well as tours which may involve an overnight stay, are all in place, so you only have to think about the classroom situation and nothing else. Imagine that clear head, with all problems addressed by those in-the-know.
A package program is a one-stop shop and one well worth the price, as I believe stress is a high price to pay in everyday life and, if it’s removed via a program package, that professional support becomes worth its weight in gold. You can get on with the job in hand, knowing that everything else has been taken care of.