When you go on holiday, you know what to pack, don’t you? You pack clothes, toiletries and some leisure items, like books and computers. You’ll also pack money, your driving licence and maybe your passport. But if that break away from home was about learning a language in another country, what else might you need to have with you?
If you were travelling to Spain to learn a language, a dictionary and maybe a list of selected useful phrases might be a good starting point. You might already have a smattering of Spanish at your disposal but, when it comes to the need of getting it right first time, having it written down might just help the situation, either for you to read from, or for someone else to read.
You’ll need a computer for storing your course work and you’ll need paper and pen, for jotting down notes. While the paper and pen might be provided by the training organisation, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
You’ll need a phone card, a good mobile phone contract, or a Skype contract, to allow you to phone home when needs must. When stepping outside your comfort zone of home, family and friends, you will find that you need to talk to those important people who make up your real world, while you’re trying to make a second real world in your chosen region of Spain.
If you’re planning to do some touring while in Spain, you may want to rent a car, or you may want to know about local transport, so it will pay you to do some research of the area you will be staying in, so that you can hit the ground running, so to speak.
Where are your local services? The nearest doctor’s surgery, hospital and police station are all places that you don’t want to go looking for in your hour of need, so these should be researched either before you go to Spain, or immediately upon arrival.
A good local map will help you in many ways but, let’s not frown on the idea that a GPS device, which is designed for use in vehicles, works just as well in one’s hand, for as long as the battery lasts. While a map is only as accurate as the day it was printed, a GPS is regularly updated and so doesn’t become out of date.
And what about leisure? Will you be taking those books and the computer with you to while away your free hours, or might you want to know what is available in the new area?
I’m sure you will have other things to add to this list and that the ones listed here are just the more general things that come immediately to mind. So, once your location and course details have been identified, there is research to be done and it all takes time. Still, there are professional companies like UniSpain, who know all of this information already and UniSpain will not only identify the perfect course for you but will also factor in such needs as picking you up at the airport, a mobile phone, details of the area and cultural trips.
