Learning Spanish with a Host Family

While studying in Barcelona, I am living with a host family.  My host mom is named Merce, and she is a lawyer at a nearby law firm.  She speaks no English, but tries very hard to help me understand.  She is a single mom, who has had a lot of experience with hosting students in the past.  She has provided my roommate and I each our own rooms, fully furnished with all of the necessities: bed, closet, desk, and so on.  The apartment is extremely cozy, located on the second floor of a residential apartment near the Sagrada Familia, one of Gaudi’s most well known buildings.  Merce’s son, Xavier, also lives with us.  He is a 23-year-old marketing student, studying at a nearby university.  He doesn’t speak much English either, but tries his best to explain himself with the basic fundamentals of something along the lines of charades.  The apartment is located between many metros, making it very easy for me to get to school at the International House, located in the city center, as well as to the beach, shopping district and much more.
All of the students on this program are staying in host families, which has made it a bit difficult to get to know one another.  We spend a lot of our time together in class, however, when the day is over, we all have to be back to our host families in time for dinner.  By the time we get home, we are too exhausted to head back out and make plans.  The students are all journalism focused, which makes it easier to find common ground because we all have shared interests, however, we are all vastly different.  There is a range of both females and males, ages 18-22.  We all try to spend as much free time together as possible, but our days our so exhaustive, we are usually happy to say goodbye by the end of our last activity, which is usually around 8pm.
Barcelona has been a very exciting experience for me so far, not just because it is a new city, but because it is with a group of students I have never met, living with a family that I know very little about.  It has tested my ability to branch outside of my comfort zone, something I do often, however, always with a bit of hesitation.  Living with a host family has helped me work on my Spanish, although I have a ways to go.  Similarly, working with this group of seemingly well-accomplished students has motivated me to work even harder than I usually do.  This experience has already proven to test of my endurance, not necessarily physically, although I’ve never been so exhausted in my whole life, but more so emotionally and socially.