Steve Maravillo

Hello everyone! My name is Steve Anthony Maravillo and I am a 2021-2022 Gilman Alumni Ambassador originally from the city of San Bernardino, California, but am currently established in The Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. The Gilman Scholarship was an integral part of my completion of my year-long exchange at the University of Granada, Spain in the 2018-2019 academic year. This past summer, I graduated from the University of California, San Diego and am now a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

 

To set the stage, traveling to Morocco as a 19-year old wasn’t entirely in my plans for my last year as a teenager; however, the experience brought forth the most authentic platform for maturity and relationship building via the most amazing friends I’ve had yet. Before embarking on one of the most enlightening journeys to this date, I was extremely anxious about the experience of visiting Morocco, primarily because I anticipated everything to be entirely different to what I was accustomed to, and not entirely for good reasons. Regardless of my nerves, the numerous positive outcomes of touching ground on the most Northern point of the African continent worked well as that “push” to make the journey, all while ensuring I keep an open mind towards all the opportunities for a good time in Morocco.

The journey from the most southern point of Spain via a town called Tarifa towards Morocco via the city of Tangier was practically fairytale-esque. After traveling about two hours from Granada to the Ferry Port, then floating across two bodies of water via the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea for thirty minutes, I’d finally touched ground in Morocco. Upon arriving, I was greeted by a number of Moroccan individuals within my age group, with the most prominent individual, Nada, who was my group lead via The Moroccan Exchange Program. After a day of roaming through the Medina in Tangier and riding camels throughout the shore in Asilah, I embarked on a three-hour trip to the Moroccan capital of Rabat. The first instant of conversation between myself and these incredible people began via a table talk that was open-ended in whatever we desired to discuss about. The talk was led by two amazing folks, named Anas and Simo, who ultimately became very close friends of mine, to where I personally call them my cousins to this date. Although I was initially hesitant to speak aloud, I was curious to learn more about the presence of relatively stringent Muslim tradition among Moroccan youth and how much or how little of it is still present in Generation Z Moroccans, particularly in the Northern region in which the conversation took place in. Anas and Simo provided very contrasting perspectives on this subject matter, with one leading towards a resurgence of Muslim tradition among youth, whereas the other shared that Western ideas, mostly because of social media and the Internet, have influenced a lot of Moroccan youth towards “westernization” regarding tradition and customs.

 

The table talk represented the start of comfort and immersion in Morocco, primarily because I shared very similar perspectives and personal experiences with individuals that grew up in lands so far and foreign from my own. Shortly after this experience, I came into contact with an individual that would forever leave an impression on me. In the midst of the most occupied space I’d seen in Morocco, the Rabat Medina, was where I was introduced to a confident, inspiring and ambitious young woman by the name of Khaoula. Khaoula expressed much interest in the fact that I’d been traveling to Morocco via Spain, given that she was working on aggressively and rapidly learning Spanish given her genuine interest in the language and culture. She was radiant and got on very well with everyone, regardless of nationality, gender and culture. Beyond Khaoula, I’d noticed that ambition was nothing ancient to the remainder of my Moroccan friends, including new ones that I’d befriend in future visits to the country throughout my year abroad, such as Achraf, a friend I’d become very fond of in terms of style and confidence, especially given his long and luscious hair.

For me, the beauty of Morocco extended beyond its physical beauty towards a notion of its surprise factor. A trip that I was initially so anxious for became the start of a relationship between myself and the country of Morocco that would grow stronger with the following visit I made seven months after the first journey. One memory that will never leave my mind, nor heart, was the entirety of Saturday, May 4, 2019. This day, all thanks to my amazing friends, Khaoula and Achraf, solidified the respect and love I have for Morocco and its people. From sailing across the Marina from Salé to Rabat to circling around the square in front of The Hassan Tower, I’d felt like I was with family when in the company of these two beautiful individuals.

 

Now that it’s been nearly three years since my last visit to Morocco at the time of this writing, it’s more clear than ever that the friendships I established overseas solidified themselves as family, even in times of despair and grief. Earlier this year, I received the unfortunate news that my dear friend, Khaoula, had passed away. Such grief for the loss of a close friend had been unknown to me beforehand; however, her presence in all the lives that she interacted with brought me and the friends we shared together in celebrating her life and the joy she shined upon us all. Therefore, this blog is dedicated to honoring the life of my dear Khaoula Ait Lakssir, a soul that will be forever missed and never forgotten among all the lives that she touched.

Hello everyone! My name is Steve Anthony Maravillo and I am a 2021-2022 Gilman Alumni Ambassador currently established in The Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. The Gilman Scholarship was an integral part of my completion of my year-long exchange at the University of Granada, Spain in the 2018-2019 academic year. This past summer, I graduated from the University of California, San Diego and am now a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

As I reflect upon the past few years of my young adulthood, there isn’t an experience that can be compared to the last month of my year abroad spent solo-traveling across all major ends of the beautiful, oceanside country of Portugal. I was born and raised in Southern California in a relatively secluded neighborhood in the city of San Bernardino, California. In my coming of age, foreign languages sparked my interest from the moment I began improving my Spanish throughout the secondary school years of my adolescence. Beyond the language itself, I found myself most interested in the variety of cultures associated with the Spanish language, particularly in the European continent via Spain. While this certainly set the foundation for my eventual year abroad to Spain, the gradual interest that I developed for appreciating both language and culture had a major impact on the way in which I perceived fluency when learning languages. Fluency became more than simply recalling corrected vocabulary words or spelling, rather it was more focused on the relationships and connections built through the language, in addition to the exploration of culture in-depth.

Upon completing the academic portion of my year abroad in Granada, Spain, I upheld the journey of traveling from the most Northern city in Portugal to the most Southern tip of Portugal for nearly five weeks before returning to California in the Summer of 2019. With no intent to become fluent in Portuguese, this summer experience in Portugal had the greatest impact on my ability to build numerous relationships across the country, in which 80% of them were exclusively established in Portuguese. I began this incredible journey in the Northern Portuguese city of Braga, where I stayed for a few days and had the most intense culture shock, in which I learned that nearly no one in this city was fluent in neither English nor Spanish; therefore, the initial struggle to communicate quickly set the foundation for what was to come and the efforts I needed to make in order to enjoy myself in the final month of my exchange year.

The most interesting part of the young adult lifestyle in Portugal is that everyone’s relatively warm, but in the most relaxing way you can depict. In other words, young people in Portugal aren’t outrageously loud or enthusiastic about everything or amicably exclusive, rather they’re more mellowed down yet relatively inviting, which was an evident difference from where I spent the majority of my year abroad. Nonetheless, building relationships with the Northern Portuguese was nearly effortless and I found myself becoming jam-packed with plans after day three in the North. As most language learners may understand, the first few words and phrases that my newly-established friends had ensured I learned mostly consisted of the usual bits of profanity. As humorous as that may be, I believe it’s always important to learn such words to ensure that you’re aware of anyone particularly using those words when referring to you; however, I never had an issue with that throughout my Portuguese journey. The language learning process developed tremendously when meeting elderly people, which were primarily elder relatives of the friends I was connecting with. In my personal experience, connecting with elders always authenticates a relationship, particularly given the difference in wisdom, experience and intellect, in some cases. Therefore, learning to communicate with elders served as a major source of improvement in my spoken communication in Portuguese, particularly because the North of Portugal is relatively infamous for having an accent that is particularly intelligible to beginning Portuguese speakers and southern Portuguese natives.

Fast forward to nearly two-and-a-half years from this summer in Portugal, I’m appalled at how much I was able to retain my Portuguese language skills and improve thereafter upon returning to California. The most intriguing aspect of my post-Portugal lifestyle is the community I’ve built among Portuguese speakers in San Diego. Beyond community building, the experience of having naturally learned a language with zero hours spent in the classroom has increased my confidence and self-esteem tremendously given that my comfort in approaching new people was thoroughly enhanced through that summer in Portugal. My advice for Gilman Scholars returning to the U.S. after learning an additional language overseas is to build community with speakers of that language in your home community, to the best ability that one can achieve. The reverse culture shock of returning to the U.S. after an international experience is heavy; however, building relationships with people that can correlate to the experience of studying abroad will ultimately result in a healthy retention of the language skills learned overseas.