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High School Lunch Culture

     One the most underrated culture shocks for me was high school lunch. Yes, lunch.  In Spain, lunch isn't really a "school thing". You either go home to eat and come back afterward, or stay at school and have the ridiculously expensive cafeteria food, which not many people choose to do. Lunch break in Spain is pretty long too, about 2 hours, so some people even squeeze in a little siesta. Then... lunch time in the US. I remember being so scared about who I was gonna sit with at lunch the first day. I had seen the movies where the new girl wanders around with a tray and nobody lets her sit down, and I was so scared that was gonna be me. But actually, I ended up being so lucky and by lunch time I already had a bunch of people offering me a spot at their lunch table. To be honest, I didn't even remember their faces or names, so I just sat with whoever waved at me first and I stuck with them all year. The cafeteria food's not good either, but at least in my high sc...
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Why Alabama?

When I found out I was going to Alabama, I had exactly 3 days’ notice. Yep, just three. So, I didn’t have time to Google, watch TikToks, or even freak out properly. I was just So excited to be going abroad at all. By then, my family and I thought it was too late for the exchange agency to assign me a host family, so when they called, I basically just grabbed my suitcase and got on an airplane.


Honestly, if I had had time to think about it, I would've totally lost it. I mean… who thinks a city girl who absolutely hates hiking is going to fit in in the most countryside state of all places?


Coming from a Spanish city, I expected Alabama to feel like another planet. I pictured cows everywhere, people riding horses on the road, and everyone listening to country music in cowboy boots (spoiler: some of that is true).


And I ended up completely falling in love with it.


Alabama is way more than just football, sweet tea, and thick accents (although those are defff iconic), it’s where I learnt what real warmth means. “Southern hospitality” isn’t just something people say in movies, people actually open their homes, cook you giant meals, and make you feel like you’ve always belonged there.


It’s the place where I watched sunsets during football games, tried banana pudding for the first time, and discovered that “y’all” might actually be the most useful world in the English language (I still can’t say it naturally).


It’s where I ate my first biscuit (sorry pan con tomate, I still love you), went to my first Friday night football game, and realised that high school football is exactly like the movies.


But most importantly, Alabama is where I realised I didn’t have to choose between being a Spanish city girl or an exchange student in The United States. I could be both.


Those 10 months have changed me in so many ways, and now my biggest dream is to go back. Not just for a visit, but to study college there, keep meeting the kindest people, and maybe even spend the rest of my life there.


So… why Alabama? Because sometimes the places you never planned for end up becoming the ones you love the most.


🩷🧳✨


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