Proyecto Bergidum

Hi everyone! My name is Sean Murley, and I am the new auxiliar in the school. I am from a town called Valparaiso in the United States. My town is in the state of Indiana. I recently graduated from Purdue University in May this year. 

Me at Purdue University

My house in Valparaiso, Indiana

I went to Valparaiso High School, where one of my sisters goes now. I have another sister who is studying at a private university. When I wasn´t living on campus, I lived with my mom, who is a teacher at an elementary school and my grandpa.

My sisters and my mom

I am going to be helping out for the whole school year, and I have been helping out in the English classes and the bilingual classes of Physical Education and science.

This is my first time visiting Spain, and Europe in general, so I am excited to be here! I am living in Ponferrada, near the university, with three students.

I am really enjoying Ponferrada, and Spain in general so far. A lot is quite different: the food and times people eat, the architecture, the landscape. (There are a lot more bars and cafés around!) I am planning on visiting many places while I am here, both near and far. I have already been to León, Astorga and A Coruña, both of which I really enjoyed. There also aren´t any mountains close to my town, so I have enjoyed getting to do a bit of hiking!

Valparaiso has about 30,000 people, so it is smaller than Ponferrada, but bigger than a lot of the towns here. I live very close to Chicago, and when I arrived in Madrid I was a bit surprised at how different of a city it was to Chicago, which has a lot more tall, modern buildings. 

As I mentioned, the food culture here is quite different. In the U.S., often to save time we will get food delivered or go to a restaurant ourselves and get takeout. In general it seems people cook more here. The coffee in the U.S. is similar: a lot of people get it to-go (for example a lot of Starbucks have a drive-thru). Some people like going to cafés to work or study, but here it seems more common to spend a lot of time in cafés, especially since there are a lot more.

Things are also definitely a lot cheaper here. Depending on what you get coffee could be more than $5. One small thing I do miss about the U.S. is that water is free and you normally don´t have to ask for it at restaurants; they just give you an infinite amount of water. Also breakfast in the U.S., I sometimes go out to eat at diners with my family for breakfast, especially on the weekend, and most people don´t do that here.

There is one Spanish restaurant in my town though, (the chef is originally from Madrid) and I wanted to go to celebrate my graduation since I was planning on coming to Spain!

Me and my roomates at Purdue University