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Author: Emma Cleaveland

Top 10 Things I Miss about Spain

Posted on by Emma Cleaveland

1. My Host Family: I lived with this family for five weeks and they were my Spanish family. They were the most caring and comforting people I have ever met.Tapas: Tapas are everything to me. In Granada, at a restaurant if you order a drink, you get a free appetizer with it.

2. Siestas: I don’t know how to function without a nap everyday.

3. The Architecture: I loved walking down the street to school and seeing the Catherdral of Granada and all of the beautiful old buildings and statues.

4. Spanish: I can feel all of the little bits of Spanish I learned slipping away since I am not using it to communicate with everyone. I miss practicing the language everyday.

5. Estrella Oriental: My FAVORITE Chinese Restaurant in Spain.

6. School: The teachers, the students, the building, the Spanish. I miss it all.

7. My Program Friends: I miss living within walking distance and even in the same building as my best friends. Going from seeing the people from my program everyday to not seeing them at all has been a big adjustment. I am waiting for a reunion party!

8. My Friends from CLM: The only bad part about making friends abroad, means that they stay abroad when you come home. At least now I have more friends to travel and see!

9. Spanish Nickelodeon: Each night, I would watch Nickelodeon with my host brother in Spanish and it truly helped me to understand conversational Spanishand it was so nice to bond with my little brother, Hugo!

10. Granada Sorbet: THE SORBET! On almost every street corner there was an amazing ice cream shop with a ton of Ice Cream and Sorbet flavors. My favorite was limon sorbet but the pomegranate.

 

Emma Cleaveland is a sophomore at the University of Missouri-Kansas City studying Communications. Emma is spending the summer term abroad on the faculty-led UMKC Spanish Program in Granada, Spain.

Student blog entries posted to the Roos Abroad Blog may not reflect the opinions and recommendations of UMKC Study Abroad and International Academic Programs. The blog is intended to give students a forum for free expression of thoughts and experiences abroad in a respectful space.

Inevitable Goodbyes

Posted on by Emma Cleaveland

So here I am… my time with school is over in Granada. I still have 4 days before I actually am forced to return to the United States, but everything about leaving is starting to hit hard. I have been laying in bed reading Eat, Pray, Love basically all day and each time I turn the page, Elizabeth Gilbert makes some comment about the beauty, the people, the food and the sheer amazement she feels in each new city and I can’t stop reading because she is overtly putting into words each complicated feeling that I am having.

The past 6 weeks I have been in a program with 25 people. We have been traveling together, in class together, in the same city together and yesterday people started leaving to go home and everything came crashing down. The reality that we all have to go home sent me spiraling. This entire trip I have been saying that I am not ready to come home and now it is more true than ever. When the first students started to leave I couldn’t understand how easy they made it look, they just waltzed out of their last day of class and went on home to pack their bags. I started to panic, I’m not ready to waltz away and pack up anything. I feel like there is still so much for me to do and so much to see. My problem is, I don’t know how to start. Like I said earlier, I have been laying in bed reading Eat, Pray, Love all day. I feel the intense need to get out into the city, but each time I think about it, I start to feel overwhelmed by the thought that this could be the last time I see _____ in Granada I finally realized that I am pushing off the inevitable goodbyes to each beautiful part in this city. I am not ready to say goodbye to the cobblestone streets, the bitter orange trees, the fountains, the amazing architecture on each and every building, the churros con chocolate, and even the buses. The bad part is that this list is the things that will be easier to say goodbye to, I can’t even begin to think about saying goodbye to the friends from my program and the other programs, the teachers who have been with us every step of the way, and above all my amazing host family. All I can say is that I promise that I will be back one day, Granada. Now it is time for me to start the inevitable and go see some more of this marvelous city.

Emma Cleaveland is a sophomore at the University of Missouri-Kansas City studying Communications. Emma is spending the summer term abroad on the faculty-led UMKC Spanish Program in Granada, Spain.

Student blog entries posted to the Roos Abroad Blog may not reflect the opinions and recommendations of UMKC Study Abroad and International Academic Programs. The blog is intended to give students a forum for free expression of thoughts and experiences abroad in a respectful space.

My First Week in Spain

Posted on by Emma Cleaveland

During the first week of my study abroad trip in Spain we traveled! This was an amazing way to get to see so much of the country that I wouldn´t have been able to see otherwise.

On the first day, we flew into Madrid and landed in the morning. This was such an overwhelming feeling, getting off the plane into a giant airport where everything is in Spanish. Once we got to the hotel, we met our new friends and visited an art museum called El Prado. For dinner we ate at a restaurant that was in a supermarket. In the first two floors it was a supermarket with different shops for each type of food. As you got higher up there became actual restuarants. The food was AMAZING!

The next day, Tuesday, we traveled to Segovia. Segovia was my favorite city because it is very old and has a lot of history. In Segovia, we saw the Roman aqueduct where the Romans brought water from the mountains to the city. Also in Segovia, we saw the Real Alcazar, which was a castle by the royal families. The Real Alcazar had a moat for protection.

Also on Tuesday, we traveled to La Granja for lunch and see the gardens at the Royal Palace. The gardens were absolutely breathtaking and the fountains were gigantic!

On Thursday, the group can on a tour of Seville and we saw all the consulates of other countries like the United States, Mexico and Argentina. In the end, the guide showed us the Spanish consulate. The consolidate of Spain was very beautiful and there  were benches decorated by each province in Spain.

Emma Cleaveland is a sophomore at the University of Missouri-Kansas City studying Communications. Emma is spending the summer term abroad on the faculty-led UMKC Spanish Program in Granada, Spain.

Student blog entries posted to the Roos Abroad Blog may not reflect the opinions and recommendations of UMKC Study Abroad and International Academic Programs. The blog is intended to give students a forum for free expression of thoughts and experiences abroad in a respectful space.