Student needs gift for Spanish Host family
 

My son is studying abroad this semester in Seville, Spain & would like to take a gift for the host family. Any suggestions?

Evening, My daughter is in the air as we speak, heading to Madrid for 3-6 months! She took with her for the family, 2 calendars (one of Chicago and one of 50's type scenes in the USA), Marshall Field Frango mints assortment, some other candy big in the US, jewelry she had gotten in North Carolina (for the teenage daughter), some great post cards of Chicago and of film stars from big sitcoms, and some cool pens and highlighters with post it flags attached (dad sells office supplies. Hopefully this will work out. Type in host gifts for a search, there are plenty of great ideas.
Bo

I think it's nice to give something very American and, if possible, specific to your region or state or locality. You might consider foods that are typical of where you live, e.g., jams or candies made with cranberries if you're from NJ or Massachusetts, pecan pralines candies from certain parts of the south, NJ salt water taffy, Michigan dried cherries, other things along those lines. I think calendars with pohotos of your state are a nice, lightweight, inexpensive gift, but I was told by an Italian acquaintance on an Internet forum that calendars are considered throwaway items and would not be seen as a gift. (You want want to take that opinion with a grain of salt, but I'm just passing it along.) For more expensive and "serious" gifts, you might consider a very good handcrafted item from a local/regional artisan who does high quality work. Sometimes Europeans are pleasantly surprised to see that there are people in the US who care about craftmanship and making beautiful things slowly, with care, because they associate the US so much with faster, more commercial, more technical things. Also many Europeans are fascinated with anything related to American Indians, so that opens up a wide range of possiblilities of gifts. If you correspond with them a little beforehand and learn about their interests, you might find a gift geared to their special interests re the USA. For example, I recently visited a freind in Italy who's a playwright, and who sometimes searches for and translates new American plays for a theater in Bologna, and who is a huge Springsteen fan, and is fascinated with the political history of Paterson, NJ, and curious about American "junk foods." As you can imagine, all those interests gavce me lots of ideas for a bunch of gifts geared for his special interests.

"and is fascinated with the political history of Paterson, NJ"

Wow, I bet I never hear that fraze again, ever.

It's actually very interesting. There were a lot of Italian anarchists from the Como area (silk producing center) who migrated to Paterson (silk producing center). There was an Italian anarchist newspaper published in Paterson. One of the anarchists ended up going back to Italy and assassinating the king (I think).

FYI:

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http://a4a.mahost.org/galleani.html




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Having many friends and business associates in Europe, I would agree that something local to your own area is a nice gift. In Spain, I am often invited to a family dinner and I take a box of chocolates made by a local family here in Pennsylvania. It's a nice touch to wrap the gift. My first trip to Spain I actually called the hotel I'd be staying in and asked the concierge for advice, it has not failed me yet.

Lily