Madrid, Spain was my home for over three years. It was my very first trip abroad. Besides the US, Spain has a very special spot in my heart like I tell my family and friends.

My trip to Spain took many years to plan. It was not exactly a vacation I just planned a few months or weeks in advance. I knew I wanted to live abroad and besides the US, Europe was big in my mind.

My entire Spanish adventure began sometime in early 1982. I was at home one morning reading the Manila Bulletin. I had a few hours free before I had to leave for school. While leafing through the pages of the newspaper, I saw an ad from the Cultural Center of the Embassy of Spain in Manila announcing the date when the qualifying exams were to be given for Filipino college graduates who wanted to purue graduate studies in Spain.

I had no inkling yet at that time that I was going to fall in love with the Spanish language so while I found the ad very interesting, I didn't give it a second thought after seeing it.

Then came the fateful day in September 1982, during my sophomore year in college in Ateneo de Manila. I had to attend my very first class in Spanish. It was a foreign language each and every Filipino citizen enrolled in Philippine colleges and universities had to take as part of the curriculum. At that time, students didn't have a say whether they wanted to study it or not. It was mandated by the Philippine government due to our history and culture being linked closely to Spain. In came my instructor, Ms. Heidi Aquino, who would be instrumental in nurturing my love for the language in the following years. That night when I returned home from school, I sat at my study table reading and studying the first lesson from the first chapter of my Spanish textbook over and over again. I kept memorizing the lines and was very successful at it. For the first time in my life, I was speaking in another tongue. I was beyond thrilled.

To keep a long story short, I excelled in Spanish in college. While the scholarship to Spain was a big incentive for me to learn the language, I truly and honestly enjoyed learning and speaking it. Thus, after completing the mandatory four semester long courses in Ateneo, I enrolled at the Cultural Center of the Spanish Embassy in Manila to further deepen my knowledge and oral fluency.

Thanks to the two Spanish women from Madrid with strong and close ties to the Philippines, Mrs. Fe del Mundo and Maruxa Pita, who became my teachers and mentors, I fell in love with Spanish even more.

By 1987, I felt ready to take the test myself at the Spanish Embassy which normally took place in March. The top five placers were always picked. I came in third among 70+ applicants. By the end of May, everything was official. I was chosen as one of the five scholars for the school year 1987-1988. I was going to Spain.