Reflecting on my Study Abroad Experience

Now that it is July 3rd and I have almost been back home for a month, I am finally having the time to wrap up this blog. I stepped off the third and final flight bringing me from Sevilla to Minneapolis on the evening of Friday, June 10th, and then on the morning of Monday, June 13th- I began a 40 hour/week internship and a summer class. My life switched drastically from traveling and learning about new cultures to going back to the American classic work life, and it changed quite fast.

By the end of my time in Europe, I was starting to really miss my American people and some random American things like driving, the comfort of my queen bed in a room all to myself, and many many boat and lake days. Now that I am back, I am experiencing all of those things which I love! (except for the jump in gas prices of course). But also, now that Europe is a part of me as well, I miss my friends from all over the European continent, and I miss my 3 Spanish families. The whole experience almost feels like a fever dream because it flew by so fast as I knew it would, but now I have memories to last me a lifetime.

Before I flew to Europe, I write the following paragraphs in the “About Me” section of this blog discussing goals for myself and what I hope to accomplish. To recap- I will include those paragraphs here and then reflect on them a little bit:

Along with my desire to visit Europe for the first time and broaden my cultural perspective, I hope to enhance my Spanish-speaking skills by taking classes and immersing with locals, other students, and even travelers from other countries. I will be taking two Spanish courses (Intermediate Spanish 2 and the Culture of Food & Wine) along with two courses focused towards my hospitality major and taught in English. Regarding my home for five months, I will be placed with a host family further giving me an authentic Spanish experience.

Envisioning my goals for this excursion include more than just academic growth as I desire to develop more personally and culturally. Being someone who likes to prepare, plan, and then prepare some more, I find myself trying to prepare for the unexpected, but part of the beauty of seeing new sights and getting a new worldly perspective is that growing is an unplanned experience. Therefore, I am going into this adventure with an open mind, heart, and soul working hard when needed, but also striving to become a more adept global citizen, student, and person wanting to contribute my skills, talents, and knowledge to the world around me. Through all of this, I am so happy that you are here to join me!

January 2nd, 2022

Beginning with wanting to enhance my Spanish skills, I will be the first to admit that I am still not fluent in Spanish BUT I am accustomed to the Spain accent now and a lot more vocabulary. Learning another language is not easy and it takes time, but immersing myself into the new way of life and taking classes in Spanish definitely challenged me in a good way. Now I just hope to not lose what I learned. I did a lot of immersing myself with Spanish locals as I visited 20 Spanish cities, plus I met many other students from the US and all over Europe. I also met so many other travelers in Spain as many Europeans also study abroad in Sevilla, and I met travelers as I visited 14 other European countries as well.

The classes I took challenged me, but they were so fun. The Culture of Food & Wine in Spain was one of my hardest courses because there was so much history and information to learn and study in Spanish, but having tasting sessions of cheeses, meats, olive oil, chocolate, and wine made it all worth it.

My long-term host family that I met on this excursion treated me so well and I will miss them dearly. My host mother Raquel truly became a second mom to me, and it was so fun to have other siblings and students in the house. I cannot wait to keep in touch.

Lastly, discussing my growth that I wanted to achieve on this trip- it is hard to gage how I experienced that growth, but I do just feel a lot more worldly and humbled now. As I mentioned before, I have a hard time relaxing and putting to rest the work aspect of things- but I found a good balance as I would plan extensive itineraries during the weeks, and then on weekend I could relax and choose to follow the itinerary or not- but moreso be at peace knowing I have done all the research before and have a reference for the best courses of action. There were times where buses into the Moroccan desert were missed, we were stranded overnight in a German train station, and other things fell through- but I learned that I can either be stressed, OR I can take the better route and laugh it off and find a new solution (which I did come to do most of the time). Visiting 14 countries truly taught me so much, and I am so happy to remember and apply all the things I learned, but one thing it also sure did was ignite the travel bug in me to already crave more adventures! I will be back to Europe to see more of it at some point, but for now- I will enjoy looking back at this blog and thinking about all of the good times I was so so fortunate to experience.

I just want to say a big thank you to my readers who came along in my virtual suitcase and stayed for the whole journey. Sharing my travels and stories was truly one of my favorite parts!