While in Spain I had the opportunity to experience the culture of Andalucia, a Southern province. I want to make that clear because as you traverse through Spain you find that provinces very close to each other can have very distinct cultural differences. I stayed in the city of Granada, a medium-sized city three hours south of Madrid by car. I was paired with a host family that was extremely outgoing, fun, active and accepting. On the day that I arrived in Spain, my host dad took my new roommate and me out to dinner and then to a concert with local bands \u2014 and the best part is that he took us backstage! This set the tone for the experience and gave me immediate insight into Spanish culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Spain social interaction is valued more than anything. More than your job, bank account or hobbies. It is not uncommon to spend 4\u20135 hours at a bar or restaurant with friends on a random weekday. Keep in mind, my host parents were about 50 years old with two young children and this was still commonplace in their daily lives. During my first few days in Granada, my roommate and I walked quite a bit, exploring the city, but we would often need to come back to the homestay for meals. One day, during our walks out and back we passed the same tapas restaurant four times over the course of 5\u20136 hours. Unbelievably, every time we walked by the same sets of people were sitting at the tables! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The local Granada cuisine reflects their cultural values as well. Instead of serving entrees, small appetizers (tapas) are served. Tapas can be complex dishes or very simple but they are always tasty. Different from most restaurants in the U.S., these plates are not served as personal items. Typically, they are placed in the center of the table with enough utensils for everyone to use; though, often food is eaten by hand. The lack of portion size requires that you sit and eat over the course of a few hours to become full. Both the physical closeness caused by the sharing and the duration of time spent at the restaurant, facilitate companionship like no other place I have been. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my month in Spain it was astounding how tired I was all the time. I would consider myself a social\/extroverted person, but in Granada I felt like an introvert. The social stamina and energy that the average person from Granada had was unbelievable. There was one day in particular that really highlights this for me the most. The celebration of Corpus Christi in Granada spans the first week of June. It consists of two days of parades and seven days of fair festivities. The celebration starts on the Catholic holiday, Corpus Christi, which is a federal holiday in Spain, so everyone can take off work. On that day, the locals flood the streets for the parades and when they finish they take the train to the fair, where they hang out until sunrise! Following around my hosts on that day, I was drained by the evening as there was never a moment where we weren\u2019t meeting someone new or talking to old friends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spain is a country that is flooded with tourism every year. People from around the world come to see the beautiful cathedrals, listen to the beautiful flamenco music and of course participate in the famous running of the bulls. But for me, the people of Spain are what define their culture more than anything. They value family, friends and personal passions much more than their status or money. I had a great time there and highly recommend it to anyone interested!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While in Spain I had the opportunity to experience the culture of Andalucia, a Southern province. I want to make that clear because as you traverse through Spain you find that provinces very close to each other can have very distinct cultural differences. I stayed in the city of Granada, a medium-sized city three hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[177],"class_list":["post-22423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-spain"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22424,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22423\/revisions\/22424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.missouri.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}