Last year, when my 13 year-old son, Sam, staked his claim in adolescence and announced he wasn’t going to attend summer camp anymore, I panicked. As a single mom living in New York City, I couldn’t afford to send him to sleep away camp, nor could I leave my job as an administrator in one of the local colleges, pack the SUV (even if we had one), and head for Maine or Cape Cod for a month. Sam was too old for day camp and too young to work. What kind of TV addled X-box blurry-eyed puddle of sludge would I come home to find if I left him in the apartment all day?

Then I had an idea. Although Sam had put the kibosh on summer camp, why not take the opportunity to do something I’d always dreamed of doing myself: enroll us in a Spanish language immersion program, somewhere far away from the hot and sticky city? I’d always wanted to improve my embarrassing tourist Spanish, and Sam was already studying Spanish in middle school. What could be better than giving him a leg up before 9th grade?

There are thousands of foreign language schools located all over the world, and hundreds of Spanish language programs in every corner of Spain and Central America. From Antigua, Guatemala to Salamanca, Spain a Beginners One class is starting every Monday morning. Through a web search, I found a number of schools in Andalusia, a region of Spain I’d never explored before. I chose Escuela Montalban, a small cooperatively run school located in the center of Granada, one of the most beautiful cities in Spain. My desires were simple: I wanted to become absorbed in Spanish language and culture while finding an engaging alternative to traditional summer camp for my son. I also wanted to have a little money left in the bank when I returned home. The price for both of us to attend school for two weeks and live in a shared apartment was just over $1000, about what I’d expect to pay to send Sam to sleep-away camp for seven days.

On the afternoon of Sunday June 30th, we arrived at our assigned apartment in Granada. Awaiting us was Wei, a young Chinese graduate student who’d been studying Spanish for the last three months. The apartment was bright and airy on the fifth floor of a ten-story apartment building, with two bathrooms, four bedrooms (although we only ever lived with two other students at one time), a kitchen, and living room with a large television (to my son’s delight). Wei showed us to our room furnished with two single beds, lots of closet space, a table and two chairs. She offered to accompany us to school the next day and pointed out a nearby market where we could buy fresh vegetables, cheeses, and meats.

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Sam and I spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, peering through intricately woven wrought iron gates into lush yards of the stately carmens, the traditional whitewashed Spanish homes that lined the twisted cobblestone streets of the ancient Arab quarter, the Albayzin. When we became too tired and lost, we turned around and headed downhill, hoping to eventually find ourselves at Plaza Nueva, a central meeting point in the city center. That night, after eating free tapas and mommy drinking a beer or two, we were able to fall asleep despite the heat.

On Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. we woke up and made our way to school. Along with about a half dozen other anxious new students, we were given our class assignments, having taken an on-line placement test at the time of registration in the States. Sam qualified for Intermediate Beginners, and I was one course level ahead of him in Advanced Beginners. Then, every weekday for two weeks from 9:00 a.m.-1:30 p.m. we attended courses in grammar, conversation, and Spanish culture. I sat next to fellow students more than half my age, who were studying Spanish to fulfill requirements for pending high school or college degrees, or to qualify for new jobs in their country’s fledgling tourism industry. For the first time since I backpacked through Europe when I was 19, I met people from a cross section of nations: Denmark, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Hong Kong. Sam made friends with students from Russia, Greece, the Czech Republic, and Brazil. Spanish was our common language, and we only fell back on English when it was absolutely necessary, or late at night when, after a few too many beers or glasses of tinto verano, it became too difficult to concentrate on speaking someone else’s language.

The best part of the trip was that my relationship with Sam grew. We’d always been close, but on this trip, we became even closer. Each morning we woke up together, ate our breakfast of toast and jam, filled water bottles, and bundled books into book bags before heading off to school. At the “pausa” at 11:15, we’d nod to each other like distant acquaintances as Sam made his way up to the nearby plaza to sit at one of the many outdoor cafes and eat croissants with his new friends (mostly 17 or 18 year old Scandinavian girls), while I rushed to the grocery store to buy food for lunch and dinner because by the time class was over, most of the shops were closed for siesta.

After school, Sam and I’d walk home together. Sometimes, he’d take my hand and we’d end up walking in unison, the way we used to only a few years before. Then, moments later, he seemed to remember how old he was and would thrust my arm away, declaring that we couldn’t hold hands anymore, as if I’d been the one to reach for him.

Back at the apartment, I’d prepare lunch, usually gazpacho, a green salad, cured meats, olives and bread. After eating, we’d be prepped for siesta. Because in that region of Spain the heat was so intense, the siesta was religiously observed. Stores shut, workers went home, most people wisely got off the streets, where in the summer, the mid-afternoon temperatures pushed up to 100 Fahrenheit.

Inside our apartment we stayed cool, using siesta time to chat with our roommates, watch silly TV shows (which were always educational because we got to practice our listening skills), play cards, and read. Sam and I spent time together too, doing our homework and talking about the progress of our trip as well as other aspects of our lives. His surly 14 year-old demeanor fell away to reveal the funny empathetic child I remembered raising before puberty hit. He told me why Andalusian’s lisp, how come “the Bronx” takes a definite article, while Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, and Manhattan can stand alone. We joked about the flight attendant on the English airliner we took over to Spain who sold lottery tickets while the plane was up in the air as if anyone needed to be reminded that it might not be their lucky day, or how the bar at the airport we departed from was filled with drinkers at 6:00 in the morning.

In the evening, there were a number of school-organized activities to one of the ancient neighborhoods or cultural landmarks spread throughout the city. Later, there were forays to late night salsa clubs and tapas bars. We attended a three hour flamenco music and dance show in the gypsy caves of Sacramonte, took a four hour guided tour of the Alhambra, which at the time we were there, had just lost the competition to be named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Our family schedule changed completely. I no longer got upset if Sam didn’t go to bed early, but instead, warned him that if he wanted to go out to dinner, he’d have to stay up past 10:00 p.m. when the local restaurants opened.

Two weeks went by as if they were two days. The assurance of having something to do and somewhere to go because we were enrolled in school flushed away the nebulous feeling of arriving in a city as a tourist and having to fill up a the days by wandering through sites and attractions recommended by a guidebook. We had enough time to explore the city, unexpectedly finding its secrets wherever we looked: the open air cinema two blocks away from our apartment that was screening “Los Simpsons,” the Festival of Poesia y Musica en los Monumentos that honored Rafael Guillen, a revered Andalusian poet who read from his work in a lighted courtyard, accompanied by a quartet and male vocalist, the crowded tapas bars and cafes that at nightfall seemed to crop up in every spare bit of sidewalk, and the endless sight of groups of people laughing and chatting throughout the evening. This all provided a more intimate view of Spanish life than we’d ever have gotten from a tour bus or by spending only a few days in the city. Before we left for the trip, we thought we were going to Spain to study a foreign language, but really, we’d walked into a new life and a new home.

Nava Renek's writing has appeared in a number of literary magazines, websites, and newspapers including www.mrbellersneighborhood, Ruthie's Club, Zone3, The MacGuffin and The Brooklyn Rail. In 2002, her first novel, Spiritland, was published by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Her new novel, No Perfect Words, is forthcoming.