By Syd Jamison

Upper School Spanish teacher Señora Esperanza Soria-Nieto grew up in the southern part of Spain, in Seville, which is the capital and largest city in Andalusia, one of Spain’s autonomous regions. She had “a very close environment” and one that, she says, “reminds me of Collegiate.” She grew up with children of her parent’s friends, and they were very tight-knit. She also loved being able to essentially walk everywhere that she needed to go, which included a park full of olive trees, where her friends would have “wars” with the olives. They would also constantly have meals at each other’s houses and play plenty of pranks too. They were such a close community that when Soria-Nieto returns to Spain, she feels like she has never left. When she returns, “I have to stop many times to talk and have coffee.” The social aspect of life is very important in Spain, and that is one of the things she misses the most from her home country.

Picture of Seville, Spain, taken from Giralda. Photo credit: Anna and Michal.

The process of moving from Spain to the U.S was relatively simple for Soria-Nieto, except that her family was not here to receive and support her. She just “signed papers, paid a couple of fees, and got my green card. Two days later, I got a job.” She also said that simply knowing English really assisted her in the process.

She came to the U.S in 1987 to study English right after high school for a full year. She stayed with a family while she studied, but was constantly visiting and learning more about Richmond and Virginia. Her father was strict during her childhood, so being in the US. alone was “kind of an experience” for her. She met her now-husband while she was staying in the U.S, and they dated for most of the year. She went back to Spain but remained in touch with him, by writing letters and calling, for the next five years.

When he graduated from college, he moved in with her family for a year while he went to a university to study Spanish. Then they got married and moved back to the United States. Soria-Nieto worked as a professor at VCU for Spanish for 13 years before coming to Collegiate in 2007. She now teaches both Honors Spanish 4 and AP Spanish: Language for 11th and 12th Graders. However, she originally just wanted to teach English, so she studied originally English at the University of Seville, receiving a dual degree to teach English and Spanish. Her dream was “to be a teacher at Fiji or Tahiti, or some kind of far-away island and work as an English teacher on the beach.” She loved the vision of working with children while seeing the ocean.

Soria-Nieto has had two children attend Collegiate. Her daughter Adriana Soria-Hawkinson (’15) attended the University of Michigan and will be pursuing her Doctorate as a Nurse Practitioner next fall. Her son Ivan Soria-Hawkinson (’21) is a freshman at Penn State

A few of Soria-Nieto’s early experiences with American food were not enjoyable ones. During her first family stay in the US, after attending a baseball game, she went to a cookout with her American family. She was served ribs and corn-on-the-cob, and that was very odd for her. She said: “It reminded me of the Flintstones.” She thought eating ribs was “barbaric.” She held the notion that “meat is not sweet, according to my culture,” and was astounded when she found out that the ribs had sweet barbecue sauce. She says that “corn in Spain was never eaten,” and she greatly disliked the texture and how often it got stuck in her teeth. She then remembered the potato salad, which was the third American food that she thought was disgusting. “I was like, ‘What the heck? Why do they put all this sweetness in there?’” She kept going, “the sweets are too sweet, the cookies are too sweet, everything has way too much sugar here.” 

After that tangent, I asked her what her favorite food from Spain was; she replied: “everything.” The only thing she did not like from Spain was the green peas. “ That’s another thing I miss a lot about Spain. The food… The dishes are very well-prepared there.”

I have had Soria-Nieto as a Spanish teacher for one and a half years and have learned and truly gained an appreciation for Spanish culture in that time. Reid Coleman (‘22) has also enjoyed having Soria-Nieto as a teacher: “​​I like her passion and energy for class and her genuine care to help her students learn about Spain and Spanish culture overall.”