I guess one preconceived notion that I had about Spain was that the majority of the people would be bilingual or maybe even trilingual and that if I was having difficulties communicating in Spanish then we could easily talk in English. I'm not sure about all of Spain but this thinking was definitely wrong for Pamplona, Spain and this lesson was learned soon after landing in Spain. My host mom for my month in Spain spoke absolutely no English and her son spoke very little English. In the city almost all the people we encountered spoke Spanish only. I was also surprised that a number of our teachers knew very little English as well. This wasn't a problem for class though since only Spanish was spoken at the school. The fact that so few people spoke English turned out to be a great thing for us because it gave us more of an incentive to learn the language and to learn the language well so we could communicate but it was still definitely something that surprised me about Spain.
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