Two weeks after arriving in Trujillo, Spain, I am finally adjusted to the timetable set by my host family and the Spanish culture. I expected to take a day or two to adjust to the six-hour time difference, but I was surprised by how long it took me to adjust to the differences in mealtimes and sleep schedules. 

When I first arrived in Trujillo, a picturesque small town in the autonomous community of Extremadura, and met my Spanish host family, my host mom sat me down in their kitchen and outlined the family’s daily schedule. In their house a typical day starts with breakfast at 8 AM. After having my piece of toast and cup of coffee, I head off to school for the morning. Everyone has two seventy-five-minute classes between 9 AM to 1:30 PM, but they are broken up by our daily coffee hour. The generous staff at La Coria, the museum where we have our classes, serve coffee, hot chocolate, and sweets while all twenty-eight of us students and our two professors catch up. After classes, I return to my host family’s home for lunch at 2:30 PM. The entire family returns from work and school to eat lunch together, and then they observe la siesta, a time for rest, relaxation, and perhaps even a nap. I usually take advantage of this quiet time to do some studying, with Tito, one of my host family’s dogs by my side. This break lasts until about 4:15 PM at which point everyone returns to work and school. This is a common practice in many parts of Spain, and most businesses close for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so their employees can go home for lunch and siesta. Like lunch and the end of the workday, dinner falls later, usually between 9:30 and 10:00 PM. Typically, I eat dinner by myself because the rest of my family prefers to eat dinner even later, around 11pm, or not at all. Having taken a nap in the afternoon, the Spanish go to bed much later than the typical American. Since staying up until after midnight is the norm, during my first week here, I would shock my family each time I said goodnight around 11 pm. While I have started to adjust to this timetable and appreciate the opportunity to relax in the middle of the day, I will be happy to resume my early-to-rise and early-to-bed routine when I return to the states.