An astute and sensitive student pointed towards an answer to this question. After using her limited language skills to confront the national airline, the local university where she was studying abroad, banks, and various other examples of the withering bureaucracy that the locals suffer on a daily basis, it would have been natural for her to have a negative opinion. She was, after all, only visiting for a month.
At the end of the experience, her travels brought her to a provincial airport where she needed to stay the night. She had previously used a hotel reservation website to guarantee a bed. Despite the website charging her credit card, the man at the information booth informed her that the hotel in question had been closed for more than two years. Seeing her frustrated he told her to wait and called someone on the phone. A woman arrived who was ending her shift at the airport. She had a sort of rural bed and breakfast on nearby land and would be happy to drive the student to her home. It was in the beautiful countryside where the student had not had time to visit as much as she would have liked during her month. Together with the woman’s two kids, they spent the afternoon at the beach and ate a great meal. The next morning they drove together to the airport, one of them to go to work and the other to leave the country.
Taking measuring of her time abroad, the student avoided the obvious complaints that she could have had. Her thirty days in Spain had been filled with far more frustrations caused by bad organization and institutional ineptitude than most study abroad experiences. Instead she wrote about her last day in the country and remarked on how every difficult experience had been met with generosity and noble character. She wrote nothing but praise for the locals in an email under the subject line “The Amazing People of Asturias”.
It has been said that a country gets the government it deserves. Spain is currently suffering an economic, political, and social crisis. It was caused by a fatal vortex of local, national, European, and worldwide failures. The country continues to function thanks to its wonderful people. Those people deserve far more than the institutions that govern them.
At the end of the experience, her travels brought her to a provincial airport where she needed to stay the night. She had previously used a hotel reservation website to guarantee a bed. Despite the website charging her credit card, the man at the information booth informed her that the hotel in question had been closed for more than two years. Seeing her frustrated he told her to wait and called someone on the phone. A woman arrived who was ending her shift at the airport. She had a sort of rural bed and breakfast on nearby land and would be happy to drive the student to her home. It was in the beautiful countryside where the student had not had time to visit as much as she would have liked during her month. Together with the woman’s two kids, they spent the afternoon at the beach and ate a great meal. The next morning they drove together to the airport, one of them to go to work and the other to leave the country.
Taking measuring of her time abroad, the student avoided the obvious complaints that she could have had. Her thirty days in Spain had been filled with far more frustrations caused by bad organization and institutional ineptitude than most study abroad experiences. Instead she wrote about her last day in the country and remarked on how every difficult experience had been met with generosity and noble character. She wrote nothing but praise for the locals in an email under the subject line “The Amazing People of Asturias”.
It has been said that a country gets the government it deserves. Spain is currently suffering an economic, political, and social crisis. It was caused by a fatal vortex of local, national, European, and worldwide failures. The country continues to function thanks to its wonderful people. Those people deserve far more than the institutions that govern them.
El campo asturiano
