My Trip to Spain

The summer in between my sophomore and junior year of high school was a good one purely since I got to take a 10-day trip to Spain. The reason I got the opportunity to go on this trip was because at my high school, if you had taken at least two years of Spanish class, you were eligible to go on a trip to Spain that occurred every other year. I had taken the minimum two years and so my parents allowed to go on the trip along with several other students from my school, one being my sister.

We went to several small and big cities mostly in central and southern Spain. We went to Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona Seville, Granada, Costa del Sol and Ronda (not specifically in that order, I can’t remember when we went where to be honest). Every city was amazing in its own way: Madrid was huge, a different language called Catalonian is often spoken in Barcelona, Toledo was small and rustic, Seville was beautiful. Every sight in Spanish was breathtakingly beautiful. It made me never want to go home and stay there forever.

We mostly did a lot of sightseeing when visiting the different cities in Spain. We went to museums and cathedrals, we went hiking and even got to go to the beach once. The most interesting part of the trip was the food. We would typically be given a meal at a specific Spanish restaurant during dinner and then be on our way for lunch, which was a great way to wander around and see everything there was to see. Gelato was a HUGE necessity while in Spain and there was a good amount of withdrawals when returning to the United States.

A challenge of going to Spain was the lack of ability I had to speak Spanish. Speaking a foreign language in a classroom is a much different experience than speaking a foreign language in aa foreign country, that’s for sure. I quickly realized my Spanish was not all that great and it has only gotten worse since I have not actively been practicing Spanish since my junior year of high school. Hint: I am not a second semester sophomore in college. Language barriers are a tough concept when traveling, however it is not impossible to visit a foreign country because there is usually someone, somewhere that speaks English, as there are usually people who can speak foreign languages in the United States.

I love to travel and this was my first experience to Europe. It’s safe to say I fell in love with the East. It was the most amazing experience and has only made me want to go back to Europe. The country I most want to visit next is Italy. Two of my good friends were lucky enough to visit Italy during high school for a leadership summit, which is what sparked my interest. I would also love to see Ireland and the Netherlands. Stay tuned to see if I make those trips sometime in my future.