fitness & fro-yo: A Magical Trip

Well, this is it. My trip has officially come to an end. It's a little hard to believe, considering I had been talking and dreaming about this trip for over a year. It's funny because at the beginning of freshman year, Sarah and I were sitting in my room with my freshman year roomie, Melissa, talking about how we would like to study abroad one day. We both mentioned Spain on our lists of places we would like to study, and that is honestly how the idea came about. We attended a preliminary study abroad meeting spring semester of our freshman year and met with a study abroad advisor early in our sophomore year, examining and weighing our options. In the end, we decided on Barcelona because this particular program offered courses that would satisfy credits for both of our degrees, plus it is the most recognized among study abroad programs, so we decided to go for it. The last thing to do was convince my dad, who was a little hesitant to let his little girl prance around in Europe by herself for seven weeks. My mom worked her magic and before I knew it, I had a plane ticket to Barcelona!

Now, I am sitting on the plane back to Houston (finally, but that's a whole other blog post!), and I can't help but feel the need to reflect on my time spent in Barcelona. I will try not to make this a long post, but bear with me. I just spent seven weeks living in a different country!

I still remember the first day we arrived in Barcelona, wandering around the airport trying to locate someone holding an IES sign, taking our first cab ride and getting our first glimpse of the city in which we would now be living. I remember being exhausted, having deprived myself of sleep, fighting the exhaustion, buying my first metro pass, almost getting run over by the tram, seeing Plaza Catalunya for the first time, and embarking on a journey that would change my life.

My first night in Barcelona -- I knew from that moment that it was going to be an incredible trip

While Spain and Europe in general are very similar to the United States in terms of development, there are some huge differences in culture. For one thing, meals are a huge deal to people in Spain. People frequently take three hour lunch breaks, and meals are viewed as a very social thing. At restaurants, you won't receive a bill until you ask for it. How different from America, where waiters often get frustrated when customers sit at the table for longer than an hour (oops, guilty!)

The work hours are extremely different. Places don't open until at least 10:00am, which is so very different from what we are used to in the United States with our 24-hour convenience stores and grocery stores that close for maybe six hours. Also, almost everything in Spain is closed on Sunday. It is truly a day of rest (or a day of recovery!) and that is definitely something I was not used to! When I ran out of meat to use to make a sandwich for lunch the next day, I was shocked to see that I would not be purchasing anything from the supermarket until Monday! Sarah and I would be walking to the metro around 8:00 each morning and people would be leisurely heading to work, where in the States, people are often times long at work by then! As a result of coming in later and getting long lunch breaks, people often don't get off work until after 7:00pm! However, even with these strange-to-me work hours, there are still a couple of hours until dinner, which brings me to my next point.

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Again, relating to food. Spaniards eat dinner very late. Normal dinner hours in Spain are anywhere from around 9:00pm to 11:00pm or later. Definitely not something this hungry-at-7:00-girl was ready for! I typically don't like eating that late because as you have probably gathered, I am one of those who is early to bed, early to rise, and I would rather not eat that close to bed time. However, Sarah and I became accustomed to staying up late, so the late dinner hour didn't really bother me, except for the fact that I was often ravenous at 7:00pm. What can I say, I am a creature of habit! Another thing that surprised me is the fact that many restaurants close durning non-dining hours. In the States, however, restaurants are open all day, only closing when the day is done. Again, so different!

In addition, the food is quite different in Spain than it is in the United States. It is often quite bland, with the addition of little to no spices. Salad dressing is simply olive oil or vinegar -- that certainly took some getting used to! Meat and fish are eaten all the time, as is bread, and chicken is not as common as it is in the States. I was a little disappointed to learn this, as chicken is one of my favorites! However, I am a huge meat lover, so I had no trouble adjusting to the extreme amount of meat and fish presented to me. I will say that I am more than ready for a real American burger!

The nightlife in Spain, Barcelona especially, is absolutely insane. While I did not participate in much of it, Spaniards would laugh at an American's idea of a "late night," as they stay out until 6 or 7am on the reg. People don't leave to go out until well after midnight, long after I go to sleep! :)

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This is a difference that may seem insignificant, but when you are wandering around looking for things it is quite significant, the lack of visible street signs in Barcelona. It happened more often than I would like to admit, but Sarah and I would be following the maps on our iPhones and all of a sudden we would be off the path that we were supposed to be taking. We would find the name of the street on which we were supposed to be, but we couldn't FIND the actual street! Street signs were a rarity, and we would often wander around for 30 minutes trying to find where we wanted to be. It will be nice to get back to Austin and have simple street names like 35th Street, 27th Street, Dean Keaton, and Speedway!

Ever wonder how Europeans can eat so much bread and still manage to stay so thin? Here's a secret; well, here are two secrets:

All the food they eat is natural, with not a lot of fat, sugar, or grease, and they all do so much walking. Even with the use of the metro system, there is still so much walking to do. Sarah and I had a 15-or-20-minute metro ride every morning and afternoon, yet we still had to walk about 15 minutes from our dorm to the metro station and vice versa. I LOVED all of the walking, I just loved it. Walking is something we Americans most definitely do not do enough of, and I found myself to be exhausted from all of the walking and stair climbing I did each day. I looked forward to walking from place to place, often opting to walk over taking the metro. It also didn't hurt that the weather was just about perfect - 75 and mostly sunny! I will definitely miss all of the walking, and I hope to incorporate more walking, biking, and rollerblading into my daily transportation routine!

The previous point leads me to my next point: public transportation -- something that I know exists in the United States, but it is not something to which I am accustomed. Obviously, there are buses in Houston and Austin, but there is no underground system, something I so wish we had! It is so, so effective and it saves so much gas money! Though I dreaded heading back to my dorm after class because that meant getting on a crowded (often smelly) subway, it is so much better than sitting in rush-hour traffic. I will admit that I do miss driving, although I am a little nervous to learn what my driving will look like after not being behind the wheel for seven weeks!

And last but not least, but probably the most obvious, is the language barrier. I have said it again and I will continue to say it, but I am so thankful that Sarah is practically fluent in Spanish, as it saved us quite a bit of confusion (actually, we still experienced a lot of confusion, frequently getting lost in the city!). I have taken Spanish classes almost all my life, but my Spanish skills are nowhere near stellar. That is why I was so excited to take an intensive Spanish class, though I knew it would be extremely challenging (and it was!), I learned so, so much by the end of the course. I actually felt comfortable asking questions to native Spaniards (running through my lines in my head, of course!) and I was able to communicate semi-effectively with them! I really felt as though my Spanish improved -- my Spanish grammar skills have always been pretty good, but my speaking and listening skills are where I tend to fall short. My teacher even raved about my improvement over the course of seven weeks! Which brings me to my next point: my teacher. Y'all, my teacher was one of the greatest teachers I have ever had, and that is truly saying something as I have had some incredible teachers over the course of my school years! Her name was Nuria and she was the sweetest lady, always smiling, always encouraging us to speak Spanish, never getting frustrated if we made a mistake (which was often!). She always found a new way of explaining things to us (in Spanish, of course) and she made sitting in a classroom for four hours a day bearable, and even fun! I will truly miss her and although she will probably never see this, I hope she knows that she was very appreciated and that her enthusiasm was so encouraging! Gracias, Nuria, for a wonderful class!

Overall, I can't say enough about my time in Barcelona (hence, the length of this blog post). It was absolutely incredible, and I am so thankful for the time that I got to spend learning, growing, and playing in Europe. I learned so much both in the classroom and out, I grew tremendously -- I was thousands of miles away from my home, my family, and anything familiar (minus the 70 other UT students who were on the program with me). I had my good days, and of course, I had my bad days, when I wanted nothing more than to be at home, sitting on my couch, watching the Olympic Trials, or standing in the kitchen with my Granny, trying out some new cookie recipe that I found on Pinterest. Whenever those bad days crept up on me, I just had to remind myself how much of a blessing this trip was and how much it forced me to rely on the Lord and realize how much He had given me. And while this was a STUDY trip, I gave myself plenty of time to prance around Europe, taking in as many of the sights and experiences as I possibly could, while understanding that I am young, and I will have plenty of opportunities to return to this wonderful continent. Seven weeks is both such a long time and such a short amount of time -- but both Sarah and I feel as though we saw everything that we wanted to see and did everything that we wanted to -- but we also agreed that we will most definitely be back to see all of the sights that we didn't get to see this time around. It was truly, truly magical, and though I am so, so happy to be heading home, Barcelona will forever hold a special place in my heart and I know that I will certainly be making a return trip -- hopefully to see La Sagrada Familia fully finished (well, hopefully sooner than that)!