Student Journals: AIFS in Salamanca, Spain

Julia Kurker
Providence College
University of Salamanca, Spain

Where to begin I don´t know... but I can only attempt to describe to you how my life has changed after only 2 months here in Spain. Back at school in Providence, I would be doing the same things, hanging out with the same friends, going out to the same places, and living in an apartment with my three best friends, and thinking life couldn´t get any better....yet studying abroad has put so much in perspective.

When I arrived in Salamanca, I was thrown into a tiny apartment with the 5 other people in my new family AND their dog. (How was I going to live with a dog??? I HATE DOGS!) No one spoke a word of English and food like Paella and chick pea soup was being thrown at me ("What is Paella???" I kept thinking, "and how come I don´t know nearly as much Spanish as I thought I did?!) Yet, I told myself to sit back and relax (much like the Spanish do), and take in everything Spain had to offer.

Two months later here I am in the internet cafe, with my new red hair from my favorite Spanish salon, wearing my new clothes from an Italian marketplace in Florence and my cheap jewelry that I bought on Las Ramblas in Barcelona and realizing just how much I have done. In the past two months I have been to the Buckingham Palace in London, I have eaten a bocadillo on top of a castle in Segovia, climbed La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, sat by the pool in Sevilla, toured the amazing mosque in Córdoba, watched a flamenco show in Granada, partied in Ibiza, tanned at the beach in Portugal, stuffed as much pasta and gelato that I could fit down my throat in Florence, shopped at El Rastro and seen the Prado Museum in Madrid. And I can´t forget Salamanca where I went to my first bullfight!...and took classes at a Spanish monastery and the Palacio de Anaya...and walked by the Casa de las Conchas, and the Cathedrals, and my favorite - The Plaza Mayor. Each day walking to the Plaza Mayor is a mystery....what will be going on there today? And tonight? A concert? A live chess game, using humans as pawns? I realize that after 2 short months I don´t feel like an American at all....and that I haven´t felt like one since the moment I stepped foot in Spain... and embraced the people and the new language that I would be speaking for the next couple of months. How can I even being to compare this life to my life back in Providence? I can´t. It´s incomparable. Will I be a changed person when I go back? Most definitely. Studying in Salamanca has changed my life in so many amazing ways....but maybe you just have to live it to understand ...