Ryen Ogan, a rising senior at Wawasee High School, will be studying in Almería, Spain for five weeks as part of IU Honors Program in Foreign Languages. Almería is in Andalusia along the Mediterranean Coast. Ogan is excited to learn more about the culture and food of Spain while being totally immersed in the language. Photo by Lauren Zeugner.

By Lauren Zeugner
InkFreeNews

SYRACUSE — Ryen Ogan, a rising senior, will be spending part of her summer vacation in Almería, Spain. She’ll spend five weeks in Spain as part of the Indiana University Honors Program, which offers summer language programs to high school students in German, French and Spanish.

Ogan learned of the program last October when a representative from IU came to give a presentation to Mindy Clobentz’s Spanish classes. She started the application process, which involved her and a parent filling out forms and her Spanish teacher, Mindy Coblentz filling out a packet of forms. Ogan also needed the recommendation from another teacher. She asked her chemistry teacher for a letter of recommendation. The application process started in October and was completed in mid-May.

She attended an orientation at IU Bloomington, where she got to meet all the other students who will be going to Almería. At orientation, those going to Almería hadn’t received host family assignments yet, but expected to learn who they would be staying with closer to their departure date.

Ogan will be in Spain from June 11 to July 15. While there, she will be attending school from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. to study language and culture. From when classes let out until their 8 p.m. curfew, the students’ time is their own as long as they are in groups of three.

Ogan explained all the students must be at their host family’s home by 8 p.m. If the host family and student are out together past 8 p.m., that’s allowed.

She is looking forward to learning more about the food and culture while she’s in Almería.

While in Almería, it’s Spanish all the time. Ogan won’t be allowed to speak English during her down time, not allowed to read English books or other materials. She won’t even be allowed to listen to music in English or any other language.

Ogan has studied Spanish for three years.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Spain, so it (the program) felt like a good opportunity,” she said.

She is passionate about foreign languages. Her uncle speaks Spanish and her family goes to Mexico on a semi-regular basis.

As she prepares for her trip, Ogan said she has a comprehensive list about what she will need to bring. The group will fly from Indianapolis to Madrid, where they will then have a six hour bus ride to Almería.

Ogan’s hopes for this trip is to become more fluent in Spanish. She also hopes to learn to Salsa and Spanish cooking.

“I think cooking is really fun and I like to learn the practices of other cultures,” she said.

She thinks the first few weeks not being able to speak English will be challenging, but understands total immersion in the language is necessary.

“That’s really the best way to learn a language. And I was expecting that,” she said.

“Ryen is a student that I look at most days and worry that she’s bored,” Coblentz said, explaining she is a very good student. Ogan plans to go into Spanish 4 next year, which will also be AP Spanish.

“I like languages. I want to catch them all,” Ogan said. She’s also taking German and has a very minimal fundamental knowledge of French, Italian and Portuguese.

“They’re all the same language, just a different color,” she said.

Other languages she wants to tackle include Thai, which she thinks would be hard since it had six tones, where Mandarin has five tones.

As she look ahead to college, Ogan is looking at possibly majoring in a STEM field and languages or psychology.