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Palma de Mallorca
The island were covered with these windmills.So the last two weeks have been a little crazy, well crazier than I’ve had the last few months because of all the academic work that I’ve been doing. During this time, I had to do 3 presentations, take 3 final exams and hand in two 15 page term papers. This normally would have caused me to go insane if I was back at Marquette, but here it was a lot easier for a number of reasons. First off, like I’ve said before, I’m pass-fail here so my grades don’t matter, so I didn’t have to worry about my grade. So, for the first time in my academic career I could study what interested me and write what I wanted and really didn’t care if I was going to be tested on it. I learned so much about different topics, but in the end I still got really good grades on all my exams and papers because I had learned so much. Second, it was easier because I was able to study or work on a paper for a few hours and then go hang out with friends. There is nothing better than working hard and then going to the beach
Palma de Mallorca
Tessa, Chris and I enjoying a game of cards. or meeting up with a friend for drinks to just relax. Finally, I really enjoyed all my classes, more than I do at Marquette. This isn’t to say that I’m not happy with my major, but at MU, all the classes that I’ve taken so far were basically just gen-eds, or prerequisites for the classes that I start taking this fall. Seriously, does Organic Chemistry sound as fun at Camino de Santiago? Also, the classes here are much smaller with 6 being my largest class and the teachers are amazing. My one teacher that I have for my Spanish and also for Camino has two masters degrees and is almost done with her doctorate in teaching but chooses to teach at CIEE because her family is in the area and she loves teaching American students. These teachers have allowed me to write my papers on topics that interest me, making the papers actually fun. For my Camino class, I wrote about the Knights of the Templar, who were a group of knights that formed to protect pilgrimages as they made their way to Jerusalem and Santiago. In my History of Spain class, I wrote a paper title “The Spanish Inquisition:
Palma de Mallorca
The view from the cave entrance. Who is to Blame?” that looked at the different causes of the inquisition from James and Peter’s difference in opinions to the Spanish monarch. This paper was a struggle to write because the professor challenged us to do an investigation paper, not a thesis driven paper. I had never done a paper like this, but I am very proud of the way that it turned out. If you want either of these papers, just send me a message and I can email them to you. Although the last two weeks have been busy academically, they have also been a lot of fun.
Two weekends ago, it was a three day weekend because May 1 was the Spanish Labor Day. This allowed me to finish some homework that I had, but also allowed me to have a lot of fun. I got to go to the beach two of the days and just hang out with friends. I will really miss being able to just head to the beach and all the friends that I have made here. I think Saturday the 2 of May has been my most relaxing day so far in Spain because the day was me
Palma de Mallorca
Walking down into the came. sleeping until 11am, then going to the beach for 7 hours, then going to watch the Barcelona-Madrid futbol game with friends and locals at a few different bars/restaurants, going home for supper and then going back to hang with friends. I’ve never had a day where I did absolutely nothing productive and just had fun like this one. Don’t think all my days are like that though, the day before I spent 5 hours working on a paper.
This past Thursday, CIEE paid for my Camino class to go the movie to see a romantic/comedy called ‘El fin de Camino’. Not only was it a good way to cap off my time in the class, it also allowed us to see some of the places that we had walked thru and stayed at because the movie followed a group of people as they did the Camino. It was a Spanish movie, so at the end of it my head was throbbing form trying to understand the words, but I although I didn’t follow all of it, I realized that I had actually learned some Spanish. It was a great time.
This past weekend after I finished my Oral
Palma de Mallorca
The one picture we snuck of the caves. Communication and then Grammar and Syntax Spanish final exams, I went to Palma de Mallorca for the weekend with some friends to celebrate. Mallorca is a Spanish island in the middle of the Mediterranean that is just beautiful. We were able to get cheap flights and places to stay, so we figured that it was a go idea. We weren’t wrong. On Friday, we laid on the beach to just let our brains relax and ended the night playing cards on our balcony. Saturday, we rented a car and drove an hour across the island to go take a tour of these caves and then watch these lighted row boat paddle around on an underground lake while one of the boats had a guy playing classical music. It was so relaxing. After our cave tour, we drove a little further to the town of Porto Cristo and got lunch supplies from a supermarket and had lunch in a park overlooking a marina before driving back to our hotel. Sunday was more beach and then flying back to Alicante. While there, we realized that this was our first true vacation, or as my friend Chris put it accidently, ‘holiday’ (too much
Mis Amigos
Haning out for the night, we got so close. time with the Brits). I mean, I’m realizing that my time in Alicante, although was challenging at times, really was a 4 month vacation, but all the other trips that I have made were about seeing things or people. This weekend was just about relaxing and hanging out with some great friends and allowed the 5 of us to just relax and reflect upon our time in Spain.
Yesterday, I had my History of Spain final, which was hard and required me to hand-write 6 pages of info, but I think that it went well. After the exam, I worked on my speech for the closing ceremony that is on Thursday with a friend (I was chosen to speak at the ceremony to represent my program because I’ve moved thru all three of the levels of my program). Then after eating lunch with my family, I met up with three friends and climbed the Castle to have apple and cheese on wine on the top as the sun went down to celebrate finishing exams. Here again, I realized how lucky I am. I know that I worked my butt off to be able to come to Spain, but the things
Mis Amigos
Kelsey and Micheala that I do on a daily basis is what most people do only on vacation. This last week or so has been a time of reflection upon my time here as well as on my life in general.
I am now only two days until I will be leaving Alicante and I already miss it. I’m going to miss friends that I travelled Europe with, struggled with to learn a new language/culturewith and just plain had fun with for the last four months. I’m going to miss my host family, nothing can replace my real family, but for them to take me in and make me feel part of the family is going to be hard to forget about. I going to miss the Spanish culture with siestas, apartment living, wine that is cheaper than coke, bakeries at every corner, meeting friends for coffee, 2-3 hr meals, passion for futbol and so much more. I realized today at the closing ceremony that most of these amazing people that I spent the best four months of my life (so far ) with, I may never see again. I’m still kind of in denial about this chapter of my life coming
Mis Amigos
I now have friends from all across the United States. to a close and am choosing to focus on other things, but I know in a week when I’m no longer in Alicante and my close friends aren’t with me, I will truly see how blessed I was to spend a semester abroad.
What has helped me not to think about my time here ending is that I will meet Brady in Madrid in less than two days to travel with for a week. I can’t wait to show him around Madrid, then travel to Marrakesh, Morocco, back to Madrid for a day and a half and then to Dublin, Ireland. We have never travelled together and I can’t wait to see part of Africa and Europe with him.
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