Welcome!

¡Hola todos, y bienvenidos a mi blog! I will be using this platform as a way to share my experiences and thoughts as a I study abroad in Spain for the next few months. I've never been to Spain before, so I'm sure that everything I see will be noteworthy, and I'll try my best to share it all with you!

A little background about me:  I'm a junior at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where I'm majoring in PPLE (Politics, Policy, Law and Ethics) and Spanish. Studying abroad has always been something that I've dreamed of: when I was in seventh grade, I remember spending an entire weekend in the mountains pouring over the AFS foreign exchange booklet with my friend, fantasizing about the different countries we could live in and the experiences that we'd have. I loved meeting international students who came to my high school, and marveling at their bravery to leave their homes for a whole year (at age fifteen or sixteen!) and immerse themselves in an entirely new culture. Needless to say, I didn't end up studying abroad in high school, and I didn't take a foreign exchange gap year as some of my friends did. But when Willamette's Office of International Education started holding information sessions last year, I signed up for the very first one, and started the (very long) process of applying, attending orientations and getting ready for my semester abroad. 

From late August to mid-December, I will be living in Granada, a city in Andalusia, Spain's southernmost autonomous region. Granada is an incredibly historical place, as it was the last city to be held by the Muslims during the Catholic reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and its fall in the late 15th century marked the end of the centuries-old Islamic regime. The city is home to the Alhambra, an ancient palace and military stronghold, and sits at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Apparently it is also very hot in Granada, which is one of the things that I'm not looking forward to. During my stay, I will be living with a host family in the city and studying at the Center for Modern Languages at the University of Granada. The program I am studying with will also take us on excursions throughout the country, so I will have the chance to visit some of the other major cities in Spain and document those as well. 

That's all until I fly out on Sunday! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there's something in particular you want me to cover while I'm abroad. 

Abrazos, 

Sophie