Goodbye Granada

 Hello everyone, this is Week 5 of my study abroad in Granada, Spain, the last week here. It’s hard to imagine leaving at this point. I’ve walked around so much that I know the streets, and I have my pick of spots to hang out in. I got everything I wanted from the experience: cool shoes, a new perspective to take with me in future classes, friendships, and a city that welcomed me. To start, it was crunch time for our classes, so I spent less time enjoying the city than I had wanted, but it was necessary to keep up with the actual studying part of the time abroad. I did try and splice my study time with walking around and spending time with the others. I ended up shopping at all the odd ends that I’d been curious about. I went to the further reaches of the city just to experience things I’ve never seen before. I loved that even after a month of endlessly roaming, there was always something surprising.

 

I loved the tiny parks dotted around and would sit in them and just people-watch. Even as I was still there, it was hitting me that I wouldn’t have this soon, and I would never have it again in this way. So after enough time contemplating in my head, I decided to journal it out. I had jotted down some little notes of highlights and particularly good days, but I’d never sat and written out my thoughts. Here in this park, I thought it out and I realized that this brightened up my experience at UCSD and that I’m going into my senior year in the best spot I could be in through the sheer excitement this brought me. It’s easy to fall into the routine and the stress, but this broke me out of it. 

Since we were leaving, we did have one final meal together. I kind of realized I spent the time avoiding being in a crowd, but now I realize I would kind of miss being in a group of people. We exchanged our rose, thorns, and buds, and mine are still true. Particularly, my bud is something I’ve been thinking about since arriving back. I said that the program kind of forced me to take a chance on people quickly. Generally, I’m slow in making connections, but I’m glad to have met and spent time with the people I met. After that, we went on a final walk through the city, and that was that. The next day, it was planes, and then an accidental extra day in Madrid, with too little time to do much of anything, and then I was touching down back home. 

Signing off,

Jasper