With about one month left of my study abroad program, it is difficult to choose which of the impactful and beautiful components of my life here would be best to reflect upon in this blog post. I just got back from spring break travels to Switzerland and Italy, the weather is heating up, Alicante is swarming with tourists, and I’m nearing a rigorous final exam. Leaving Spain will be bittersweet.

This morning I made a list of things I have to look forward to in St. Louis as I anticipated purchasing my flight home. Having never lived outside of the state of Missouri, I now recognize how special it will be to have personal ties to a country and some of its finest people across an ocean. I will be taking many recipes, postcards, habits, and memories back with me. Additionally, there are lots of Spanish cities and regions that I wanted to see while here but didn’t get the chance. So, I absolutely plan to come back!

Two highlights from this middle portion of my time in Spain were the multi-day hikes I did with my fellow Mizzou students and ALI Abroad professors. They were part of the classes we are enrolled in for the program, but both were optional. The first was called the Senda del Poeta, a three-day tribute walk for the revolutionary 20th-century poet Miguel Hernández. The hike starts in the town of Orihuela, where he was born, and ends in Alicante, where he died from lack of medical care while incarcerated by the then-dictatorship. It was amazing to hear renditions of Hernández’s poetry while we rested, explore small towns in the region of Spain I’ve been living in, talk with other admirers of this poet, and appreciate the natural landscape of Alicante Province. However, this journey was the most physically grueling experience I’ve had here. The heat of the sun made us feel delusional, the food offered was not ideal for fueling a body to walk all day long, my left foot endured an impending stress fracture, my whole body was fatigued from sleeping two nights on a hard gym floor, and the soles of my feet were excruciatingly bruised from walking only on concrete. With all this said, my friend and I cut the walk short on the final day by taking a bus home from Elche. So, this experience, though truly a positive one overall, was discouraging as we anticipated an even longer hike a month later.

In April we did five days of a Catholic pilgrimage called the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James. It has many routes to the city of Santiago de Compostela, which pilgrims have been hiking since the 9th century. Though my classmates and I did not embark on this journey for religious reasons, it is of great importance in Catholicism because the city’s intricate cathedral is where Santiago, or St. James, the apostle’s remains are said to be buried.

I was nervous to repeat this physical pain, so I tried to learn from the Senda del Poeta in preparation for the Camino de Santiago. I practiced long hikes in Alicante wearing my backpack with added weight, wore a two-layer sock combination to prevent blisters, tied my shoes much looser, and traded my sneakers for sandals at any break during the hike. My feet, though uncomfortable during the Camino, never neared the pain they endured on the first hike. I found myself dancing down hills with friends, running in the Galician rain, singing in seemingly enchanted forests, laughing with herds of sheep, and gleaming amidst the beauty of a lush and mountainous region that so many people before me have enjoyed. This all reinforced in me the idea that a challenge shouldn’t prevent you from trying something again. Rather, I was able to gain so much knowledge from that first difficult experience, the Senda del Poeta, and made the second, the Camino de Santiago, a much more pleasant one. Though the impending return home is sad, I can confidently look back upon these adventures with true admiration.

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: University of Alicante: ALI Abroad