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Editor’s note: Hope College offers more than 300-plus programs in over 60 countries for off-campus study. Freiburg, Santiago, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Seville, Rabat, Paris, Valparaíso, Sydney… the world is wide open. Interested in learning more? Contact the Fried Center for Global Engagement or stop by the Martha Miller Center Room109 to meet with the staff or peer advisors. Learn more about Hope College’s Off-Campus Study program at https://hope.edu/academics/global-engagement/off-campus-study/index.html.
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Living in another country may seem daunting, and let me tell you it is, but soon enough it begins to feel like home: you start to love being there, and when you come home you miss it.
My time in Granada could be summarized in that very sentence. The weeks leading up to my semester were a rollercoaster of emotions. I was very excited to meet everyone in my program and explore the other side of the world, but I was not sure if I could leave my community at Hope and my friends and family for four months. Not only would I be on a different continent, but I would be dealing with a six-hour time change, having to get a new SIM card for my phone to get data abroad, and living a life I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
The first month and a half of my time in Granada was very challenging. Everyone shows you the good moments of being abroad, but the times of homesickness and doubt are real. I, too, experienced this: I posted pictures of me traveling to different cities, exploring my new home, and spending time with my friends. In all of those photos, I was smiling and looked as if I was enjoying my time. In reality, most days, I was fighting homesickness and doubting my decision to go abroad. In the evenings, I would call my parents and my friends crying because I missed being at Hope, having a strong community, and doing life the way I knew it. Despite this, their constant encouragement and assurance gave me the courage I needed to try to make the most of my time and make new memories.
I began to plan weekend activities with my friends, explore new sights in Granada, make plans for weekend trips to other countries, and joined a track club within the city. The quiet soon began to disappear, and those moments that were originally filled with longing and sadness were replaced by laughter and new experiences. Soon enough, I loved where I was living and did not want to leave.
Granada has so much to offer, and I now realize that if I had kept sulking in my room and sticking to the two-mile radius around my homestay, I would have missed out on so much!
The weekends in Granada consisted of visiting coffee shops, sitting for hours talking with friends and doing homework, going for walks along El Rio Genil, exploring different hiking trails in the mountains, and even going skiing one weekend.
On long weekends, I planned trips to visit new places, solo or with friends, and made lifelong memories. In October, we had a five-day weekend, and I took the opportunity to visit Samantha, my roommate from summer camp, in Scotland! I got to see her hometown and meet her family. We explored Edinburgh for a day, and it seems funny now, but at the time, it was so nice to be surrounded by people who spoke my native language.
My program offered an excursion to Morocco for five days where we traveled, learned about the country, and got to meet new people. We stayed with host families in Rabat for two nights, rode camels on the beach, and went on a hike in Chefchaouen. It was crazy to think that just a bus and ferry ride away from Granada, there was a whole new continent to explore.
A couple of weeks later, I took a quick two-day trip to Madrid to explore a new city, one much larger than Granada. This was my first time traveling by train alone, and it was such a fun experience. I saw all of the must-see places in Madrid and walked all around the main part of the city.
In December, my friend Cecelia and I took another long weekend trip to Italy. We both got to see friends who were studying abroad in Rome and Florence as well as got to explore all the sights, sounds, and foods Italy has to offer.
While these trips were so fun and I created many memories, my day-to-day life in Granada was also exciting, and to this day, there are aspects of it that I miss deeply. Throughout the week, my time was spent going to class, eating the new Spanish foods my host mom cooked for me, participating in the Spanish siesta, and practicing with a local track club.
One unique characteristic of my program was that we could take all of our classes in Spanish. I jumped at that opportunity and challenged myself to get even more comfortable with my Spanish. I am happy to say that my Spanish comprehension and speaking skills improved immensely. During the class day, we had breaks between classes, and that always meant a merienda (or snack time) for students at IES. One popular spot was Galletanas, which had the best cookies for only €1.80! After all of my morning classes, which ended at 2:15 pm, my roommate and I would head home to have lunch with our host mom. Every day was something new and delicious. We got to try many different traditional Spanish foods and some of her favorite recipes. The rest of the day I would work on homework, explore local spots, and go to practice with the track team. It was scary at first, but over time I was able to hold conversations with some of my teammates and even the coach! Training in another language was interesting but so fun. I also was able to meet and practice my Spanish with some local students, whom I would not have otherwise met.
I do not know when it happened, but at some point, a switch flipped during my time in Spain, and I couldn’t be more glad that it did. I went from feeling homesick to making new memories, new friends, and fully embracing what Spain had to offer along the way.