Summer in Salamanca: final thoughts
Well it’s been almost a whole month since the program officially ended, and I’ve mostly been lazy about blogging but I’ve not had a bit of time to reflect on the program as a whole.
Looking back on it now, I miss a lot of aspects of it. Our group, apart from maybe one or two needles in the haystack was really good. I made some great friends that are some of the funniest, cool, and unique people I’ve met. This was such an important aspect of the whole trip because if we had a bad group it would have been all downhill. Sure, we kind of started to build into subgroups mostly based on where we lived but for the most part everyone was friends with every one which I loved.
I wish I was able to met more locals but I don’t really know how I would have gone about doing that unless I put out a craigslist ad saying young american wants to met fun locals.... yeah bad idea. But the locals I did interact with were so nice. Whenever Brianna or I asked where something was, more than once people would not only point in the direction but help us get to the place we need to go. The workers at cafes we usually went to between classes began to recognize us and were always friendly as well.
I didn’t like how we had all three of our classes ever day of the week, unlike at JMU where you have your classes either Mon/Wed/Fri or Tues/Thurs. It was a little much to handle. But I did like that everyone in Spain is so relaxed and laid back, so the teachers were reliably 10-15 minutes late to class everyday, so we only had 45 minute classes. The grading is just bizarre in Spain and I could not begin to understand it or explain it. I.m 99.99% sure it’s all totally subjective on if the teacher likes you or not, but my grades did turn out fairly decent even though I was a huge stress ball for the the last two weeks of the program leading up to exams. We didn’t have any work for the first 4 weeks and then if all came at once it was awful.
As I have mentioned in earlier post, our madre basically was a moody bitch that has gotten to old for her job. Her food was pretty good for the most part, we had pan (bread) at every single meal. It was way to much. It became a joke in our group that we were all gonna turn into big pieces of pan and then eat ourselves. Madre also served us some questionable meats at some points, and when we asked her what kind of meat this was she just responded, oh just different kinds of meat. Sketchy.... and I ate way more huevos (eggs) than I ever wanted to eat. Needless to say, I’m officially a vegan now to cleanse myself out from all the meat and cheese and eggs. I wish I was able to explore more restaurants in Salamanca because there were a lot of cute cafes out along all the streets that looked good and we always walked by them ever day going home for lunch. I only got to go out for dinner a handful of times in Sally.
The worst part of the whole program was that we found out that there’s a whole surveillance service on us at all times. Not even exaggerating, well maybe a little. But the madres talked to Jesus’s wife every night, tell her if we went out did homework, went to the gym, were we went, if we took a shower, if we breathed, ugh. I don’t really know what she said about us but I know most of the time it wasn’t good. I understand that we are in a whole other country from our own, we wouldn’t go on this trip unless we were confident we could handle ourselves and our parents trusted us, we did not need to be monitored on a daily basis I hated it.
My favorite weekend was definitely Barcelona, closely followed by Lisboa - these two were the free weekends lol. But I did like the excursions for the most part. MY favorite of them was definitely Cantabria because I did not feel rushed or pushed along to get to the next place. We had so much time to hike and explore and take as many pictures as we wanted and tan as we wanted. I think it also helped that we didn’t have to go to any cathedrals or museums (praise) I was all architectured out by the end of Anadulsia.
Overall I loved Salamanca, but I don’t know if I could spend more than 6 weeks there. It’s a fairly small city, and I don’t really know what to compare it to in terms of American cities but the closest I can come in terms of size is Charlottesville. It’s small enough that if you’re there long enough you might begin to see familiar faces in the streets, but it still has a city feel. I think I would be able to last in a bigger city like Barcelona or London for a lot longer just because they have more to offer. But I’m so thankful and glad I was able to finally study abroad, it was honestly a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I learned so much from the whole experience and I will remember it forever.
Over and out, I hope everyone enjoyed my rendition of all my adventures!
Muchos muchos besos para siempre,
M xoxo
ps. I might write a quick post on Paris and London if I feel up to it, but we’ll see ;)
