Elliott grew up celebrating Spanish holidays, even though her family doesn’t have a Spanish heritage. While her grandfather was a Spanish teacher, he  influenced Elliot’s mother and aunt to also become Spanish teachers. Then, Elliott also became a Spanish teacher.

       “Originally, I was going to go to law school,” said Elliot, “then I realized that it wasn’t for me.”

      Elliott started college at Pitt University with Spanish being her minor, and then she made it her major. While studying at Pitt, Elliott had to do a program where she traveled to Spain to live for six months. The first night she got to Spain, she got lost on the metro and she had to ask for help in Spanish.

    ”Since there’s really no cars, you take the metro everywhere,” said Elliott.

       While Elliott stayed in Spain, she lived with an older Spanish woman named Rosa. Rosa had three young grandchildren that she was teaching English. 

         “They start learning young in Spain,” Elliott said, “The kids knew a couple things in English.”

        In Spain, they still take siestas in the middle of the day. Siestas are where people come home in the middle of the day and they stay at home for a couple hours and then they go back to work.

        Also, there were really no houses, they lived in housed apartments. There were also no super markets in Spain; everybody went to markets to get their food. For their other products, people went to pharmacies.

      Not a lot of people know English in Spain, so it was hard to communicate.

                “Not a lot of people know English,” Elliott said, “It’s hard to communicate when you’re an American trying to speak Spanish. Some people are really picky about how you say things.”

      When Elliott was in Spain, the European soccer team won something big, so the whole team marched to the center of Barcelona.

     “It was like an ‘organized riot’,” said Elliott, “The police let them have their fun, and then they had to call in the riot police.”

    Over all, Spain was a really good learning experience for Elliott, and she also got to travel around Spain. She went around the coast and in the north a ways. 

       “I like to remember going to Spain, it was a really good time and a good learning experience,” said Elliott.