Hola! My name is Claire, and I’m a Junior studying abroad at the University of Navarra this Fall semester. Before beginning my exchange, I didn’t know much Spanish. I had never been to Spain before, so I didn’t know what to expect.
Culture shock didn’t hit me in the way I thought it would. I imagined it to be moments of homesickness or when struggling with the language. Instead, it crept up on me in the small, unexpected details of everyday life.
During my first week, I found myself frustrated over something seemingly trivial: bed sheets. When I arrived at my accommodation, I realized that because I hadn’t booked a cleaning service, my room didn’t come with linens or towels. On top of that, bed sizes in Spain are different from the U.S., with names and measurements I had never seen. I attempted to use my Apple Measure app to figure out my bed size, but when I got to IKEA, none of the sheets seemed to match the measurements I had written down. I was exhausted from traveling and just wanted to go to sleep in that moment. Yet there I was, wandering through IKEA’s endless aisles, overwhelmed by something as simple as buying sheets.
It's a common joke that IKEA is famously confusing, almost like a maze. But in that moment, the store felt like a metaphor for my experience in Spain. It was a new place I had never navigated before, full of signs I couldn’t quite understand.
As silly as it sounds in hindsight, the hardest part of my first week wasn’t homesickness or culture shock in the “traditional” sense, it was finding the right sheets. It felt in the moment like nothing in my life was fitting together. That doesn’t mean other adjustments weren’t real, but it taught me an important lesson in that culture shock doesn’t have to look the same for everyone.
My advice to future study abroad students is to be patient with yourself during the initial adjustment period. Some people feel homesick right away; others, like me, get tripped up by everyday tasks. No matter what it looks like, your experience is valid, and with time, those small frustrations will turn into stories you’ll laugh about later.
Eventually, I flagged a worker and was able to get help making sense of everything. As I lugged my blue IKEA bag back to my accommodation, I let out a sigh of relief and started to feel like maybe everything would be okay.
Claire Kennedy-Penuel
Fall 2025
GW Exchange - University of Navarra
Elliott School of International Affairs
International Affairs Major