Hola chicos!
I’ve been in Madrid since June 4th, and still wake up everyday completely in awe of this city. The people, the culture, the SHOPPING, and the sheer amount of enthusiasm that Spaniards live their lives with is just something I could write about forever. I remember when I first got here that I was so nervous about being in a big city, somewhere completely new, and not being super confident in the language.
Now, I’ll have completed a whopping 4 upper level Spanish classes when I get back to Alabama with new Spanish slang and almost too much information on Medieval Spanish poetry (Shakespeare did NOT invent the sonnet)! I have fallen in love with my classes and my new language, and not having to think through every word anymore when people speak to me is crazy- sometimes the other girls in my class and I have competitions to see who will speak the first word of English going all the way back to the dorm and through lunch.
That’s another thing- my program has only 15 people in it, and we’re such a tight group in this little separate Spanish universe that I forget that in just a week and a half we won’t all be living in this beautiful city with each other anymore. I actively forget we all go to UA sometimes, but we’ve pinky promised reunions (with special dishes we splurge on all the time here). It’s also just bewildering to think about how lucky I’ve been to travel to cities all over Spain with them: we took excursions to Segovia, Toledo, and Salamanca, and toured places all over Madrid itself. Whether it was watching professional flamenco shows, or getting lessons with all 15 of us, or touring Madrid football (no, not American football,) or cooking paella together, we have really experienced so much and bonded through all these interactions together.
Now, we’ll all have to leave each other and this country (with a new Euro Cup). It’s going to be so hard to imagine going back to Tuscaloosa after being so city center for so long, and I’m definitely going to miss the public transportation, but above all, I really just can’t imagine having studied anywhere else now. I feel like Madrid has become a little snippet of my life, and after being lucky enough to travel to other cities on weekends like Porto, Marseille, Barcelona, and Sevilla, I never stopped feeling relieved to get back on the Metro number 7 towards Pitis…
This isn’t to say abroad didn’t come with its homesickness, because believe you me we were almost TOO excited to go to Five Guys after class to get cherry Cokes from the Freestyle machines. But, I will say, the teachers we’ve had that make such a connection to us (both of my teachers from June follow me on Instagram and we like each other’s stories!), the random people that get so excited to ask us about what we’re studying and what we’re learning about here (especially in the environment of the Euro finals when a herd of American girls is screaming their head off for Lamine Yamal), and the walks back to our rooms in the hallway with small shouts of “Hasta mañana” make everything worth it.
I am so excited to come back to Alabama and share about my experience and- cheesy as it is- the friends I made along the way. Madrid will always hold a part of my heart, and I’m dreading the day I have to say “Madrid, te extraño” instead of “Madrid, te amo”.
