Dailos Perez is Harding’s newest exchange student. He comes from Santa Cruz de Tenerife Spain, an island 130 miles from the north-western coast of Africa. Santa Cruz is the capital and 2nd largest city of the Canary Islands home to half of Spain’s island population important ports and the largest twin towers in Spain. Santa Cruz was also rated one of the top five best places to live by The Guardian.

“It’s like a small Madrid but with many beaches around it,” Perez said.

The exchange agency Perez worked with was for America in general and while he was familiar with more famous places in America like California he got sent to Oklahoma of all places. I asked Perez if he knew anything about Oklahoma before he found out he was getting sent here.

“I knew practically nothing about Oklahoma before coming here, only about the NBA team,” Perez said.

Not all that surprising considering our lack of anything notable but we do have the Thunder. Perez is a man of many hobbies, on top of basketball he enjoys hanging out with his friends going to the beach where it’s a warm 80°F year-round and watching movies. Most of all though he loves cars and occasionally goes to car shows in both Spain and America. Perez is not completely unfamiliar with America and has been to the east coast a few times. He even went to San Francisco with his host family over thanksgiving break. The best word to describe America that Perez could think of was different. A good way to describe it because Oklahoma and Santa Cruz are certainly different. He used that word different to describe a lot of things here like the food weather and culture. Despite all the differences Perez is fitting in here and is at the very least enjoying things. Perez will be here for the rest of the year. After that he wants to be a business major and go to the university of Madrid in Spain.