During my freshman year at Dickinson, I went to German table almost every week, which meant that I heard lots of Bremen stories from the seniors who had spent the previous year there. Many of these stories involved Jens Schroeder, the program director affectionately called “Oma” (“Granny”) or “Mama Ente” (“Mother Duck”). Like Professor Jorge Sagastume here in Málaga, Jens’ job is to make sure the Dickinsonians in Bremen experience their new home and surrounding areas safely. But is this job exclusive to the program director? As I proved to the other Dickinsonians in Spain and myself during our most recent excursion, I don’t think so.

Our second of four Dickinson excursions took us to Cordoba and Seville. By “us,” I mean a total of 14 people: ten Dickinson students, the previously mentioned professor, his wife, the tour guide and the bus driver. Generally speaking, when we walked from place to place, the tour guide would lead the group and the Sagastumes would stay toward the back of the group, keeping us all together.

The exception was in the Giralda, a minaret-turned-bell tower in the Cathedral of Seville which none of the adults chose to ascend. When we started walking up the ramp to the top, I found myself deliberately letting everyone else go ahead of me. It didn’t surprise me that most of the group didn’t notice, since it didn’t make sense to turn around; it also didn’t surprise me that one of the girls asked if I was doing OK at one point, since it’s widely acknowledged that I’m the slowest in the group. However, I was surprised by the reaction of one of the other girls when she saw me waiting for her to finish taking a picture and keep walking; she said, “You don’t have to wait for me.” Later in the day, when we were walking in the Roman ruins at Itálica, I once again waited for her to finish taking a picture and keep walking, even though this time the tour guide and Sagastumes were with us in their usual positions. Once again, she told me not to wait for her. I responded the same way each time: “I’m something of a self-appointed Mother Duck.”

Now why did I say that? After all, I won’t be in Bremen and under the guidance of the person actually called “Mother Duck” until next semester; I don’t even know if anyone currently in Bremen calls Schroeder that. We don’t have any nicknames along those lines for Sagastume or his wife, though we do appreciate all they (the tour guide and bus driver included) do for us. And when I’ve brought up the rear in previous situations, which has happened somewhat frequently, I haven’t called myself that. When a bunch of us went to Portugal, where only I could speak the official language, I often led or kept the group together in some way, but I didn’t call myself “Mother Duck.”

I think the answer in this case can be traced to earlier that day, when we first introduced ourselves as a group to the woman who led our tour of Seville. When she asked how long we had been in Spain, Sagastume said, “Three months.” This answer surprised me, so I did the math: Since we arrived on Aug. 13 and were answering the question on Nov. 2, we had been in Spain for 11 days shy of three months, so I can’t blame him for rounding up. Considering that we’re in Spain until Dec. 20, or for a total of four months and a week, realizing that three months have gone by makes me nervous that I haven’t done enough with the nine other Dickinsonians here. In order to deal with this nervousness, I assigned myself the role of “Mother Duck” as an excuse to keep everyone together as a group, even though this was completely unnecessary when we were all heading on the same path up the tower.