Undergraduate / "life will teach you" - Significant Experience Essay - My Road - Common App Essay [4]

Driving down the highway at about eighty miles per hour, I felt cold beads of sweat roll down the small of my back as I clutched my tattered seatbelt. The mountainous landscape flashed by my window as dust from the old road chased our vehicle. Our driver was forced to skillfully weave in between a slew of potholes while dodging drivers of the oncoming lane. Only minutes before had I thrown my bags into the back of the yellow Honda and waved a short goodbye to my mother. My mother and I had only discussed my trip almost every day for the past three weeks, but I knew she felt a sweeping terror as she left her only son in a different country. There's nothing quite like the feeling of having a total disconnect. Your mind is racing with a thousand thoughts per second, your heart thumping through your chest like you've just guzzled five red bulls, and that eerie tingling starts to cause all your hairs to stand on edge. Try and imagine that feeling; now, don't let it stop for three weeks.

This is the only possible way to begin to describe my trip to Spain. If I could put it into words, I'd merely say I was living. I didn't build a community center. I didn't grow from perseverance through any herculean tasks. I wasn't set on the right path through some miraculous piece of knowledge gained on my travels. However, I did experience life in a way I believe many others have not. We all live our lives down certain roads. My road consists of my friends, my school, my parents, and anything else I encounter on my daily life as an American teenager. However, for three short weeks of my summer, I took an unbelievable detour.

Replacing my days of cool bottled water and air conditioned rooms was murky tap water and brutally humid nights. Walking ten miles down a dusty dirt road to dive twenty feet from steep cliff faces took place of going to the mall. Driving myself to get McDonalds turned into catching dinner from the Costa del Sol. I could sit here and tell you how much I painfully missed my American home and my loving family. Or how I made it past these initial hardships to understand how thankful I should be for what I have. However, this would be a lie.

The truth is I loved every bit of every moment of my life in Spain. For three weeks there was no Facebook, no Friday movie nights, and certainly no organized summer camps. What I gave up materially, I made up for with the gratification of living. I was building a whole new life from scratch. Playing mindless games outside, admiring something so beautiful that nothing else crosses your mind, just talking and forgetting the stress of high school, whatever I had forgotten as a child I regained in those three weeks. I had host parents, two host brothers, different friends, and a whole new language. I felt like I was experiencing my seventeen years of existence in a completely new way. I was living it raw and uncut, and I loved it all. I loved the challenge, I loved the gritty lifestyle, and I loved it because it was so resolutely real. Of course, saying nothing for almost three days while I tried to understand the tangled mass of words coming out of my new family's mouth was beyond difficult. I never thought I could live without phones, internet, and television while being only preoccupied with my own thoughts.

I remember the night before I left my newfound friends we laid silently under the stars, sharing each other's thoughts as we squeezed sand past our fingers. I stayed up until the very last moment my plane left the ground, attempting to hold on to every last bit of my new home. When I came back home my mother squeezed me almost as tightly as my host mother had when I left. After my description of my home, my friends and family's first questions were always the same: How did you live like that? Aren't you glad your home? Do you realize how lucky you are now? All I could think of was a famous Spanish proverb my host mother had told me one night while I helped her heat up our leftovers, "Lo que en los libros no está, la vida te enseńará." That which isn't in books, life will teach you.

I know its a bit long which I will work on, but what I am really wondering is if any of you find glaring grammatical mistakes and also if you think my essay is too bland or cliché. Thank you!