On my first day of Spanish class in Barcelona, my professor asked us to write down some of our goals for the semester on a piece of paper. I had to think for a minute about what I wanted my goals to be. I had thought about some ideas before arriving, but I hadn’t taken the time to put them in writing. Eventually, I jotted a few ideas down, one being a goal to focus my travels within my home base country of Spain. I ended up sticking with this goal, and it was one of the best decisions I made while abroad. Luckily, my program made it super easy to travel a lot within Spain, as they offered many pre-planned weekend trips to Spanish cities. I signed up for all of them.

During my four months abroad, I traveled to just a few other countries, but visited 12 Spanish cities both with my program and on my own. At the end of the semester, our last Spanish assignment was to do an oral presentation reflecting on our original goals for the semester abroad and our experiences. To my surprise, my choice to focus on traveling within Spain ended up being unique compared to my peers’ experiences. Many of my classmates talked about how they completed their goals of visiting a different country every weekend. Some of these presentations made me second guess myself. I wondered if I made a mistake by not traveling to many other countries.

Later that evening, I took some time to reflect on my experience over the past four months. I looked back in my travel journal I had been keeping and read over some of my entries. Reading about my adventures in 12 Spanish cities made me confident in my decision to focus my travel in Spain. I got to see and experience so many amazing things, and my favorite trips ended up being to cities I never heard of prior to studying abroad. I was able to get to know my home city of Barcelona and home country of Spain very well, to the point where I felt like I belonged and wasn’t an outsider. Overall, I had a wonderful experience in Barcelona and all over Spain where I learned so much about Spanish culture and history, and about myself.

---

Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: IES Abroad: Liberal Arts and Business in Barcelona