Universidad de las Americas - Puebla

Being that it was my home university's program transported to UDLA, I had no language barrier because everythig was taught in my native tongue of English. My host family was not to have spoken anything but Spanish but my host brother always wanted to speak English to better himself. I made an extreme effort to make friends with people that didn't know Englsih so that I could learn Spanish.

I was already pretty fluent in Spanish before I started studying. However, I think my written Spanish improved during my time at UDLA. I didn't take any language courses but I knew international students who did and overall they seemed to be impressed by the quality of tuition.

Altough I had very good grades at school in Spanish, it was quite hard to fallow everyhing at the beginning of my study time in Mexico. But most of the people are quite patient and try to explain expression that I didn´t unterstand in other words. That happend as well in social but also in university life. Therefore I learned a lot of new vocabulary and my listening skills developed strongly. If I am talking now to a native speaker I often her compliments about my spoken Spanish and that I adopted the Mexican way of speaking:-)

Learnt a lot. There are many variations from Mexican Spanish and Castillian Spanish that should be aware of before you go, as I found out when asking a hotel porter where I could have sex with a bus!

At first I was concerned about taking classes taught in Spanish, but the tutors were used to teaching international students and I experienced no real problems. Socially, I gained confidence with time and by the end of the semester, I felt much more at ease. The fact that there were lots of international students from all over the world helped enormously, as Spanish bcame our common language.

Living in Mexico really obliges you to learn Spanish, and a few months in Mexico is already enough to really improve your Spanish. But it all depends on your own effort.