Trevor Huxham

From 2012 to 2015 I worked and lived in Spain as an auxiliar de conversación , or a language assistant in public school classes taught in English. I wasn’t the only American in Spain, though; over 2,000 people from the States move across the Pond every year to do the very same thing. I interacted with countless fellow auxiliares over these three years, many of whom became housemates, good friends, and travel partners. In this post, I’ll talk about the ten general categories I think 95% of all language assistants fit into, and to show I don’t take myself too seriously, I’ll show how I think I each type applies to me (if applicable, of course). The Way to Fisterra, the End of the World 👣 // Santiago de Compostela is famous for being the endpoint of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, but not many know that the Way of St. James continues on west to the coast after reaching the Galician capital. Just 89km away lies the fishing village of Fisterra, Spain's version of Lands E...

Another school year in Spain has come and gone. I’m back home in Texas right now with my family and working to save money while I get ready to return again this fall. Last summer, I wrote  what I thought about the North American Language & Culture Assistant program , which allows recent college graduates like myself to teach English in Spain. That review was based on my experience working in an elementary school in rural Andalucía and living in an off-the-beaten-track, mid-sized town called Úbeda . Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, during a night rain Having worked at another elementary school in coastal Galicia and lived in the regional capital of Santiago de Compostela this year, my opinions of the program have become more nuanced, although they are still generally positive. Since I’m going back to the same school in the fall, I find myself at the midpoint of my time in Galicia (northwest Spain): a perfect time to reflect on my experience in this program. A qu...

Last year on the blog, I wrote a post about what a typical day in Spain looked like for me. Of course, my life this year has looked a little different now that I’m living in a completely different part of the country (Santiago de Compostela in the northwest). I’ve put together below something to give y’all an idea of what life as an auxiliar de conversación  is like—but reader beware: this is only my individual experience, and even people living in the same city can have wildly varying times in this program. Hope you find this interesting! In the morning My street My morning schedule is surprisingly similar to the one I had my first year: I get up around 7am (sometimes later…), have breakfast, shower, pack a lunch, and dash out the door not long after the nearby monastery’s bells chime out eight-o’-clock. I always enjoy walking the quarter of an hour it takes to get from my apartment across town to the carpool pickup spot, as Santiago is calm and doesn’t have much car or ...

It’s that stressful time of year again: the Spanish Ministry of Education has now begun assigning native English speakers from North America to work in public elementary and high schools across the country. First-timers anxiously (and impatiently) wait to hear back from the government to see where they will be spending the next eight months of their lives, and veteran language assistants have their fingers crossed, hoping to get placed in their preferred region. Placements are already rolling out this early in the spring, which inevitably means fellow teachers, expat friends, and family are asking, are you going to renew? View this post on Instagram The green Galician countryside, somewhere between Santiago de Compostela and Ourense. I'm off to León province to the east this weekend & looking forward to a change of pace (and weather!) // #green #galicia #spain #travel #vsco #vscocam A post shared by Trevor Hux...

From last October through May of this year, I worked as a North American Language and Culture Assistant at a bilingual elementary school in southern Spain, a job in which I assisted teachers in English, science, and music classes for 12 hours a week in return for 700€ a month and health insurance. I lived with two other Spanish guys in an apartment in the World Heritage-listed town of Úbeda and was able to travel all across the southern half of the country as well as to France and Morocco. Nine months of speaking Spanish and being immersed in Spanish culture—not to mention living on my own for the first time—turned out to be one of the best years of my life. Skyline of Jaén city seen from the castle So, what are my thoughts about the program? If you guessed that they’re mostly positive, you’d be right—just take this post’s first paragraph (or read this blog!) as proof. My personal experience as an auxiliar de conversación was a great one, and I was so fortunate to end up a...

LAST UPDATED JANUARY 2014 After applying and getting accepted into Spain’s language assistant program , and after living and working abroad for a whole school year, you’ve decided you want to do it all over again. You’ve read through Spain’s official how-to-renew guide , but their guide for renewing via Profex is all in Spanish and the application period begins tomorrow…so what do you do? Read below, that’s what! In this blog post, I want to make it as clear as possible how to renew for Year 2 (or Year 3…) since the process is similar, yet different, from Year 1. If you finish reading the post and still have questions, leave a comment and I’ll try to answer it! Me at the Plaza de España in Sevilla 1) Figure out where you want to renew Sevilla’s Torre del Oro and the Guadalquivir River at the blue hour Not everyone chooses to stay at their same school for a second or even a third year; sometimes people want to change from a rural to an urban setting, from a primary...

I know I’ve already tweeted about it twice now, but I would like to officially announce on this blog that I will be a North American Language and Culture Assistant at an elementary school in the town of Boiro, Galicia, for the 2013-2014 school year. (Source: Wikipedia ) Galicia is a little-visited region of Spain in the northwest corner of the country, just to the north of Portugal. The language they speak there is very closely related to Portuguese, although everyone speaks Spanish as well. Like the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., Galicia is green, lush, and rainy—and it’s the last adjective that everyone here down south always uses to describe the place, even though it’s been really rainy here, too! Famous for its seafood, the region is well-known to the rest of Spain for pulpo a la gallega  (Galician-style octopus) and mejillones en escabeche  (canned, marinated mussels). Perhaps infamously, the naval town of Ferrol is the birthplace of dictator Francisco ...

Love Spain’s language assistant program or hate it , if there’s one perk to being an auxiliar de conversación in Spanish public schools for one year, it’s that you can travel so much more easily, especially in Europe. Below are eight reasons that being a language assistant can help you reach your dreams to travel. Fez train station 1) You are legal for 8+ months in the Schengen Area of European countries (Source: Wikipedia ) The Schengen Area, which covers most of the continent, essentially dissolves borders among 26 European countries. This is extremely good news for the 400,000,000+ people who live in the region; for example, there’s no border controls or passport-checking if you cross the French-German border or fly from Portugal to Poland. But it presents kind of a problem for non-European travelers : tourist visas in the area are only valid for 90 days every 180-period, which means for every 3 months you’re in Europe, you have to be gone for 3 more months before yo...

LAST UPDATED APRIL 2013 This Monday was Tax Day in the U-S-of-A, so, uh, glad that’s over. Thankfully, because of the Internet (oh, Internet, where would we be without you?), I was able to file my taxes online and get a refund direct-deposited a month or so before my return was due, but it was a little trickier this year because I’m working as a language assistant in Spain . There’s a lot of misinformation out there on the forums and Facebook groups, but after sifting through all the recommendations and going straight to the horse’s mouth (i.e., the IRS website), I managed to come to a reasonably-safe conclusion about what to do with the meager income I gained as an auxiliar de conversación . Day 093/365 - Tax Time Phat Cash! by Tony Case on Flickr To make a long story short (see below), the program grant is taxable , and you declare what you were paid from October to December (probably 2.100€) in dollars ($2,730 at the current exchange rate of 1EUR to 1.30USD) as income,...

As a language assistant in Spain , you’ll be expected to show up to your school (or schools) and work in 12 hours of classes every week, helping your assigned teacher in bilingual courses. In return, you’ll receive 700€ a month, health insurance, and time off on national holidays (e.g., Christmas and Easter). This is the bare minimum of what is required of you to spend two-thirds of a year living and traveling abroad, but I think many assistants, myself included, often worry that we don’t live up to certain expectations of what an “ideal” language assistant should look like, whether that’s how they should work or what they should do in their spare time. I’d like to shoot down some common misconceptions people have about the program, many of which I once thought should have been true of myself until I wrote this post. Street in Barcelona 1) You don’t have to travel every weekend, month, or break There’s this big pressure on participants in the program to take trips all the...

Since most of the posts on this blog have been mainly travel-oriented lately, I thought I’d whip up a post about what living abroad really looks like, about how I live in between exciting (but once monthly) weekend travels. If you don’t already know, I’m currently working as a North American Language and Culture Assistant ( auxiliar de conversación  in Spanish) in an elementary school in a small village called Villanueva del Arzobispo , which is in the south of the country. The gig is good for the better part of one school year (October 2012 through May 2013), and I work 12 hours or so a week for 700€ a month, health insurance, and three weeks of vacation (at Christmas and Easter). Úbeda, the town where I live Although travel is a strong passion of mine, I’m a pretty big introvert and homebody, so my Instagram and Twitter feeds probably aren’t always the most accurate representation of what life as a language assistant is really like. I hope this post brings things a litt...

We language assistants here in Spain can be a whiny bunch. From worrying about not getting paid on the first day of the month (despite being warned that our first paycheck would be delayed by a month or so), to being bored in a small town, we tend to voice any and all concerns in the program’s forum and its numerous Facebook groups. But even though we do have a few legitimate reasons to complain (not getting paid is perhaps the most likely candidate), we language assistants still have a handful of things to be thankful for during our time in Spain. In light of our recently-celebrated American holiday of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d list five things I’m most grateful for while living abroad. View this post on Instagram I can't believe myself. Pumpkin pie made totally from scratch while overseas. SUCCESS! A post shared by Trevor Huxham (@trevorhuxham) on Nov 19, 2012 at 12:02pm PST 1) We get to live in Europe I know th...

LAST UPDATED AUGUST 2015 For Spain’s North American Language and Culture Assistant program , you work 12 hours a week as a teacher’s assistant in English-speaking classrooms. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in doing, check out my post on how to apply for the program. However, once you’re accepted, you’ll have to apply for a student visa, rather than a work visa, in order to work in Spain as a language assistant. The government technically classifies the program as “continuing education” and you officially receive a “grant” each month…whatever. At least the visa process is simpler! My student visa for the 2012-2013 school year In this post I’ll explain how to apply for a student visa through the Consulate of Spain in Houston . This information applies only to those served by the Spanish consulate in Houston; i.e., residents of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and, of course, Texas. The Houston consulate’s website ...

LAST UPDATED JANUARY 2014 The gig I got working in Spain for the 2012-2013 school year is through the Spanish Ministry of Education’s North American Language & Cultural Assistant program ( auxiliares de conversación in Spanish). Basically, as long as you’re a senior in college/a college graduate, a citizen of the U.S. or Canada, and a native speaker of English or French ( vive le Québec! ), you’re eligible to apply. You can read my review of the program here , but in this post I want to show you how to get from where you are right now to the example email below in which Spain announced my placement in Andalucía. The golden ticket to Spain!!! Before I begin, please read over the official resources provided by the ministry, for they walk you through the craziness that is Profex (the online application program): Profex Manual (How to register online) (2014-2015) Application guidelines (2014-2015) Frequently asked questions (2014-2015) Checklist to print off (2014-201...

Well, after rolling out of bed this morning, I checked my email and was met with a message from Auxiliares CED with the subject line “ Su puesto como auxiliar de conversación en Andalucía ”—which means “Your placement as language assistant in Andalucía.” Hooray! Two weeks and six days after receiving my regional placement, I now know my specific school placement in the region. Come to find out, I’ll be teaching in an elementary school called CEIP Nuestra Señora de la Fuensanta , which is in the city of Villanueva del Arzobispo  and the province of Jaén . Before I go on, here’s a guide on how to pronounce all these places, since I’m going to be talking about them a lot on this blog. CEIP Nuestra Señora de la Fuensanta (school) NWAYS-trah say-NYO-rah day lah fwayn-SAHN-tah [ˈnwe.stɾa seˈɲo.ɾa ðe la fwenˈsan.ta] Source:  Wikipedia Villanueva del Arzobispo (city) bee-yah-NWAY-vah dayl ahr-thoe-BEES-poe [ˌbi.ʝaˈnwe.βa ðel ˌaɾ.θoˈβis.po] Jaén (province) k...

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog, A Texan in Spain ! If you haven’t heard yet, I got a job in SPAIN for the next school year and wanted to share my time there with you here. Having waited since March 31st, I FINALLY got word today from the Ministry of Education that I will be a North American Language and Culture Assistant in the Autonomous Community of Andalucía !!! (Source:  Wikipedia ) In a few weeks, they’ll tell me which school I’ve been assigned to , and then I can start the visa process . Now what’s that long job title entail? Well, in Spanish they call it a  auxiliar de conversación extranjero —“foreign conversation helper.” So a conversation teacher? Not necessarily. The other title (subtitle?) for the job is a “Cultural Ambassador” from North America. The program  brochure that my Spanish professor gave me (bless her!) explains it like this: The Language and Culture Assistants program is coordinated by the Spanish Ministry of Education in co...