What Program Did You Choose and Why?

First of all I would like to say is to embrace your uniqueness, it is beautiful that you have a difference.  Ok, now with that said do not be afraid to ask for accommodations. Accommodations are there to help you and your program should be able to provide those accommodations.  If the program cannot provide them then that is not the program for you and you need to know that straight up.  That’s how I found out that ISA was my program.  I asked my advisor at the Study Abroad Office if all the programs were going to be able to provide me accommodations of 50% extra time in a controlled environment and she was able to tell me which ones were more likely to be able to work with me.  When the international fair rolled around and I got to ask these representatives for myself they were like we can give you the information in a few days or a few weeks.  There was only one, ISA, that said we will definitely be able to find you accommodations and in my head it was like “Ding! Ding! Ding!”  I knew that they were my program. 

I chose ISA, which is International Studies Abroad, because I've been abroad before but I've never studied abroad.  I was worried about accommodations and I was worried about if something went wrong who would I go to for housing, food, providing excursions, and things like that that you don’t get when you direct enroll because that would be like me directly enrolling in Pitt it would be a lot different.  So I wanted someone to baby me, to take me along, but also to step back and let me experience things on my own and that’s exactly what ISA did.  They gave me a guiding hand to take along and guide me but they didn’t hover over me or anything like that. They were very supportive and let me make my own mistakes if I made any, but I don’t think I did.


What Do You Wish You Knew Before You Left?

I think a list of resources would have been very beneficial because that way right in front of you  you’ll know exactly what the country, I’m my case Spain, would have been able to provide me and I wish I would have had that information beforehand.

Most importantly I would have loved to get advice from someone who has studied abroad with a disability, knowing that someone with a disability like myself can go abroad and have a wonderful time gives me all the more confidence I need to do it on my own.  I hope that by doing this documentary I will be able help somebody else go abroad and show that someone with dyslexia, or any disability, was able to go abroad and had a wonderful time.

What Were Some Issues That You Faced as Part of Dyslexia?

When I first got there, like everyone else, I was excited that I had new friends and everything but I was feeling kind of neglected by my friends because no one had called my cell phone. Then I went to class and my friends were like “I've been trying to get a hold of you why haven’t you called me back?”  I’m like "OK, how did that happen?" So then I’m thinking and I realize I must have given everyone the wrong number because I switched a six to a nine, so I gave everyone the wrong number.

I was upset that I had to go back and give everyone the right number but that wasn’t the biggest problem.  At the end of class I realized I may have charged this incorrect phone number with 60 euros worth of talk time.  In Spain , how you work your mobile phones is you charge your phone with prepaid minutes and that’s how you go about talking until those run out.  My problem was it was at the beginning of the semester and it was the first two weeks I was in Barcelona and I wasn’t fluent in Spanish yet and I didn’t know what to do, I had put 60 euros on someone else’s phone and I didn’t know how to explain that. I went home that night and I’m trying to talk to my senora and explain the situation and once she got it, she just felt horrible.  So she had her brother who had been to the States who had learned some English so he would come with me to Finaque, which is the store, and explain the situation that was going on. He even explained that I had dyslexia and that’s why I switched the numbers in his explanation; that was nice.  With the help of my senora and her family and being able to reach out and ask for help, I got that help that I needed and every thing went ok.  At times it is frustrating because you go into a store to make a simple purchase and you can’t do that -- you have to check once, you have to check twice, you have to check 3 times.  However, if that the most complex and biggest issue I had in Spain , then you know I will take it. 

What Were Your Accomodations Like

A homestay says to me what it is in the name it’s a home.  I'll be able to go home there and have and ill have someone else to help prepare food and do laundry and things but most importantly that means ill have a family.  I’ll have someone that cares about me  because I’m very family oriented and I needed that if I was going to go into a whole different country and live there they provided support someone to talk to, to give advice.  You know I think back of my homestay and senora and senor that I had and she was incredible.  She was that grandma that you’ve always wanted and would just give advice and her word was patiencia, which means patience.  That’s all that she would tell me and I’ll never replace a homestay for a residencia or anything else.  That was my best decision.

My school-related accommodations at the University of Pittsburgh were 50% extended time to complete an exam in a controlled environment.  I asked my professors if they would be at least willing to give me at least 50% extended time because I can deal with a little bit of noise in a room that is usually quiet and respectful in that sense but I wanted to make sure I had enough time to finish an exam. All of my professors when I first told them they were fine there was no problem with that at all. 

What Kinds of Support Did You Receive From Your Family?

I got a million questions:  “What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?  Here is a whole bunch of books of different countries that we've been to.  Where would you like to go?  What do you think would be the best place that’s going to provide you with a safe environment?”  I guess my parents weren’t really ready for me to go somewhere that’s going to be dangerous even though that’s what I want to do with my life

My parents were very supportive in every which way with money, obviously I wouldn’t be able to go without them and they still remind me to this day of the bills that I provided because of all my spending and travel but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do when you can. They were very supportive.

My stepfather was extremely excited because he loves to travel and maybe I got that travel bug from him but they were so supportive, all three of my parents, they willing to research things with me and say, “Oh, here is a book on Spain or here's a book on Latin America” but I knew in my heart I wanted to be in Europe, in Spain, so I got to go there.

Did You Travel Often?

I was in France twice I got to see Paris when we were in Paris and we saw the Eiffel Tower . I couldn’t believe it at all.  It was ridiculous; I took like 20 pictures of the stupid Eiffel tower like over and over again.

During Semana Santa, which is a holy week in March that everyone has off.  I had a wonderful time. I got to go to Valencia which is in Spain and I went to Las Fias which is this huge celebration where Spaniards create these paper-mache sculptures but they are all very specific to the culture there are some things about Picasso the figures of Picasso but these are paper mache building high and at the end of the week, end of the festival you burn them and there is this huge party and millions and millions of people in the streets of Valencia.  I was there and I got to experience that and from Valencia I went to Morocco , and I went to Marrakesh and I went to Portugal and I was in Lagos .  After the program I went to Amsterdam and Brussels and back to Spain and Granada and back to Barcelona with my mother and so I got to travel a lot.

What Did You Like About Your Program?

I think it was everyday of knowing that I’m in Barcelona . And I'm in a city with so much culture and so much heritage and there is you know these Catalonians with so much of Barcelona their capitol and like looking at the streets and looking at the buildings and seeing how much historic value they have and how beautiful it is and knowing that I'm here and I am so blessed to be here. 

Barcelona is a very cosmopolitan city.  I mean they have everything you can imagine there.  That’s the biggest city I have ever lived in.  I mean I want to go back there and live there again and like that is my new home.  I think it’s the most incredible city in the world, it has the best night life in the entire world, and that’s very important in the time of my life I think.  There is so much to do there; I feel Barcelona has more culture and more richness than we do in the United States .  I’m sorry to say that, but its true -- there is so much history there.  You walk there and a street is older than I could ever imagine and that just says so much to its character of Spain -- and the Spaniards are so nice.  They would say “Hola, guapa”.  To have a culture where you say beautiful hi how are you.  And that’s how you greet someone that just shows so much of what they say or no pasanada, no tengo prisa… those are all sayings that basically reflect the fact that  they take it easy and don’t worry about life.

My senora always told me to be patient, told me to follow my heart, and told me “don’t worry about it things will work out for the best” because there were some crazy things that went on and I didn’t know how to handle them. You know what someone that you take for granted all the time here in the States, are always on the go and overscheduled.  Before I left I was in so many organizations; I was a chair in 3 organizations the semester before I left.  I mean, yeah, its great but I was crazy I was going from here to there to there and that took away from having patience in life and she showed me and the whole culture of Spain showed me its ok to have a siesta in the middle of the day and take time out for yourself and just go to the beach and listen to the waves. I’ll never forget that..

What Did You Learn When Abroad?

When I was abroad I met so many people.  I met so many Americans which I was not expecting,  but I even met a diverse population of Americans because I've ever met someone from Iowa before I knew people lived there but I've never met one you know and one of my closest friends is from out in the Midwest and that’s really important to me.  There is like Craig there’s Eva there’s Sarah there’s these people that have changed me in a way in so much and I keep in contact with them. We talk all the time and we still say like hola guapa or like how you doing tio or tia because in Spain as a friend you say tio or tia.  And I'm so grateful that I got to meet these people they changed me they made me a better person and not only the Americans that I met in my program but the Spaniards, my senora the advisors, at the east office. You know the people in the street the couple I sat next to on the ride home on the plane and had this wonderful conversation the whole time and they told me that my Spanish was perfect and I was so impressed with myself you know they all changed they all impacted me every single person I met abroad.

After I had been abroad and seen how other countries deal with diversity I realized they don’t deal with diversity like we do here.  You know its not there way of life of thinking we have to have this number of this many people and we have to think like this and that and see these colors and have to remember the fact that we have to look past these colors.  There, it’s who you are is who you are.  You don’t care what color hair you have or what color skin you have what country you come from because there is such a concentration of different countries in an area  so diversity is just natural and here we try so hard and its so sad because like being the diversity chair I saw how hard it is to try to take people from different ethnicities and bring them together and I never understood why and so being in Spain and being abroad I felt home with diversity and being multi racial I felt home with that fact that you can do that and its ok and it’s a real natural sense but I wish everyone would step outside the box of the united states and take a little piece of diversity from the real “natural” standpoint and bring it back home and that’s what I plan to do. 

Why Should People Study Abroad?

I think it’s very important that students feel comfortable leaving the security that the U.S. has provided with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and so knowing what measures that Spain, in my case, has taken and the rights of people with disabilities would have allowed me to still have that security blanket that was created in the United States.

Of course everyone should go abroad that’s our new motto at the study abroad office.  Study abroad is for everyone and you know it’s true.  Whatever your disability…no, let me rephrase that. Whatever you difference is doesn’t matter; we are all unique everyone has the ability to go abroad and I hope what I'm doing right now with this, whoever is listening, will help people go abroad because it’s the best experience that you can have and for me its going to change everything that’s what I want to do in life is live abroad help people abroad and I'm so happy that I had this experience. Going abroad changes you in every aspect of the way you think your philosophy how you feel about yourself the way you look at others you know it changes you.  And it’s usually for the better. No it will be for the better.  Everyone should go abroad. Everyone.