Not a Place

  This weekend I got to see an old and very good friend. We were talking about the places where we live and the places we've been to or want to go, and I commented that I wish I were back in Spain instead of in the US at least once a day. Every single day....

Random Ramblings from Sevilla

(My other working title was "Stephanie finished her homework due tomorrow and doesn't want to work on her paper anymore.") I still have to catch up and fill y'all in on my Barcelona trip (amazing...one of my favorite cities) and la Feria de Abril, a huge festival in Sevilla. But tonight I thought I'd reflect...

La Semana Santa (Holy Week)

La Semana Santa, Holy Week, is an important holiday throughout Spain, but most of all in Andalucía. Thousands of people flock to Sevilla for the festivities, which is one of the reasons I took most of that week to travel to Portugal. However, I returned late Thursday before Good Friday and was in Sevilla through...

University Life: Home and Abroad

For this week’s TCU blog assignment, I get to channel my inner nerd and talk about differences between the American and Spanish education systems. I want to be a political science professor when I grow up (if I word it that way it makes graduation seem further away and I feel less old), precisely because...

(Mis)communication

As an unapologetic language nerd, I love discovering new phrases, especially ones that don’t translate directly into English. It’s like a puzzle, figuring out where words originate, connecting words linguistically to other languages, unearthing a bit of history or culture behind a phrase. Spanish, the second-most spoken language in the world, is a particularly fascinating...

Odds and Ends

This weekend I took a break from traveling so I could enjoy spending time in my host city. There is so much to see in Sevilla, and I love discovering new things about my Spanish home every day. Here are a few of the fun, random, crazy, weird, exciting things I’ve encountered recently: Remember when...

Stop and smell the oranges.

In my Latin American Geography class last year, my professor began by listing major American cities and asking us to call out the first thing that came to our minds. New York? Central Park. Los Angeles? Hollywood. Boston? Red Sox (boooo). What I found most interesting was to hear others’ first responses to my city,...

All about Perspective

On the first day of my Civilization and Culture of Spain class, our professor gave us a questionnaire to see what we knew/thought about Spain already and asked us what stereotypes we held about Spaniards. Instantly my mind flew to the importance of meals and familia, the fútbol obsession, and, of course, the siesta that...

First Impressions

After months and months of saying, “Is this Spain trip real?” I am finally discovering that it is indeed real. It’s been a week since I left for Sevilla, and what a ride it has been so far. The journey from St. Louis to Sevilla took a relatively easy 15 hours. Maybe I’ll be over...