La Josefine

Hello!

My name is Josefine Halén and I’m 22 years old. I graduated college in 2007, since then I’ve been travelling around, being on adventures. This has made me independent, grow as a person and stay calm in all types of situations. I am very interested in different kinds of cultures, love a challenge and meeting new people.

After my graduation my first stop was Mallorca, I took a job at a German/Spanish hotel as a waitress and spent four months there trying to learn both the proffesion and the languages. I stayed up studying new words every night and was excited to use them the next day. 
Im gonna be honest, in the beginning I felt really homesick and called my mom every day for the first two months. Despite that I was determained to finish what I’ve gotten myself into and after a while I spoke quite good both German and Spanish. When the season ended I made a promise to myself, I wanted to return to Spain, it was the best thing I’ve done in my life at that time.

I went home, worked hard, earned money and my next destination was Alcala de Henares in Madrid. This time I went to study spanish, I had fallen in love with the language and wanted to know more about the spanish ways. Before I went I had contact with a guy called Carlos about renting an apartment, when I look back now I realize that I was naïve to trust him. He ended up taking my money and escaping to Brazil. So there I was, in a new city without a place to live. Luckily I had som really nice classmates who welcomed me into their home. 
To solve my problem I started to ask people in the village where I could get help to find an apartment and after a lot of phonecalls I found out there was an office where they could help me. I went there, used my shaky Spanish and talked myself into an apartment where I could move in the very next day! My spanish course lasted for a few months and when it came to an end I didn’t feel ready to go home just yet. I made contact with a few people I’ve met when I was in Mallorca, took next possible flight and worked at a new hotel until the end of the season. 

During my time in Spain I met loads of different people, I experienced things a lot of girls in my age have no knowledge of yet. This has made me the person I am today, ambitious, humble and most of all given me a mind of my own. 

If I, as an 18 year old girl managed to go to a foregin country, without any knowledge about either the language or culture and work within a proffession I had no experience of, I can assure you I will be able to study and live wherever in the world I end up.

My goal with a semester abroad is to become familiar with how the foreign school system works and make me prepared to work abroad after my teaching degree. In 2008 I studied a course on South American history and culture at the University of Stockholm, it caught my interest. This is the reason why Chile attracts me, but I also want to develop and deepen my knowledge of Spanish.
I am confident that I will be a great representative of Södertörn University, Sweden.