Incredible Summer in Madrid

I interned in Madrid for the past two months through the Adelante Abroad program. Adelante essentially sets everything up for you prior to arrival including your internship placement and housing and then you are basically on your own. My girlfriend and I both took part in the Adelante program and were able to live together in an incredibly nice apartment set up by Adelante in a very nice neighborhood of Madrid. It was definitely a relief having an apartment with zero issues, making Madrid instantly feel like home.
The adelante program starts off with two weeks at the Eureka language school where you are completely immersed in Spanish, with zero english speaking allowed in the school. Having very little Spanish background prior to this summer I was definitely overwhelmed in the first 15 minutes at Eureka, but that went away by the end of the first day and I really enjoyed the school and lessons. I actually wish there was someway that the program could work in additional time at Eureka into the 8 week program rather than just the two weeks in the beginning, but I understand that would be difficult with the internship hours the last 6 weeks.

I have a fairly unique major in college, making it somewhat difficult to find an internship placement in Madrid, but Adelante placed me with Sotavento Consultores, a financial consulting firm doing market research analysis and I was very happy with my experience at Sotavento. I was basically independent on my own projects for the entirety of the six weeks interning at Sotavento, allowing me to take on as much as I wanted in terms of workload. The work place is certainly different in Spain than the United States, but Im very grateful to have had the opportunity to see how business is conducted in Spain and to give insight on business in the United States.

I did a significant amount of research before traveling to Spain and decided to purchase an Eurail pass for traveling on weekends and I am incredibly glad I did. I was able to spend two weekends in Barcelona, a weekend in Valencia, San Sebastian and Granada as well as a day in Segovia all without worrying about the cost of point to point train tickets. My time traveling on weekends was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, and I would recommend other Adelante candidates do the same as you will have plenty of time to explore Madrid during the week days after your internship and in the one or two weekends you spend here when not traveling. Spain is a beautiful country and each region looks and feels entirely different, definitely something worth experiencing.

While Madrid was not my favorite city I visited in Spain, I was very glad I chose to do the Adelante program here rather than another city for several reasons: 1)Spanish is much more common in Madrid than other cities. From my experience, it appeared that Madrid had much less English speakers which made learning and speaking Spanish much more important and necessary, something I definitely wanted from an abroad program. While in Barcelona I felt like I heard more English than Spanish or Catalan, definitely not the case in Madrid. 2) Madrid is centrally located in Spain. It was very convenient to be within a 5 hour train ride of every city I wanted to visit, making it possible to see as much of Spain as I did. 3) Madrid is the heart and hub of Spain. From a professional point of view, Madrid definitely had the feel of a big business city most similar to what a businessman is likely to encounter while leaving home for work in the U.S, giving me additional experience in how best to navigate big cities, which is infinitely different than what I grew up around.

The Adelante program is definitely not the typical summer abroad experience from what I read about from other programs online prior to choosing Adelante, but that is not a bad thing. The cost of Adelante was definitely cheaper than any other programs I came across, and this is probably due to the independence the program includes. You will feel as connected to Adelante or as independent in a foreign country as you choose. My girlfriend and I essentially had no contact with Adelante aside from the weekly or biweekly emails they send, and I was completely okay with that, while I understand others may want more of a structured program. If structure is what you are looking for than Adelante probably is´nt the right program, but if you want to get a real world experience in a foreign city where you can basically do what you want when you want to do it then I would recommend Adelante. I was a big fan of not having oversight while abroad as it forced me to figure everything out on my own. Adelante was definitely the best program for the best price for what I was hoping to get from a summer abroad, and without a doubt the most valuable experience I´ve had in my life. Having never been abroad aside from the Caribbean, I was very nervous to leave the U.S, but as im getting ready to leave Spain in another day I cannot wait to figure out where I will travel to next.