Amazing cultural and language immersion program in an easy-to-navigate city

Bilbao is a small, walkable city with great public transportation, amazing food, and stellar cultural offerings. There are numerous free exhibits and concerts every week, and I took full advantage of the cheap, incredible food options across the city.

I went to Spain as a Spanish major wanting to cement my language skills, and ISA's Bilbao program let me do exactly that. Homestay was the only housing option (which I wanted), and my host family was incredible; my host parents supported my language immersion tirelessly (talking with me over daily family-style lunch about Basque culture and and Spain and teaching me new vocabulary) while also giving me the independence to explore the city and travel.

ISA's pre-program visa-support process in the US left a lot to be desired, but Genoveva (the on-site coordinator in Bilbao) is the absolute best. She connected me with volunteer opportunities, cultural experiences, and students seeking English tutors.

Be aware ISA offers classes through CIDE (el Centro Internacional de Español) at Deusto University. CIDE is a language exchange program designed specifically for North American students, so you'll start and end the semester on a North American schedule and take classes with mostly other North Americans unless you opt into classes with locals (although you will have to push to take more than one class with Spanish students per semester). The CIDE instructors are excellent, though, and they offer a variety of classes designed to meet requirements for Spanish and Business degrees. They will cancel some offerings (like Medical Spanish my year) for low enrollment, so pick backup classes with your advisor.

I joined Deusto's Basque dance group, and you can take language classes separate from your CIDE classes at the university's language center in the evenings (including French and Basque). There is also a chapter of the international student group Happy Erasmus in Bilbao that organizes weekly events and weekend trips in English for students from around the world.

I loved Bilbao so much I took a gap year after my program to continue volunteering on a tall ship based in the city. For a student who had never left the united states before but wanted as much Spanish immersion as possible, it was an incomparable experience.