Granada, Spain: Land of the Moors

This blog post is the first since my revival of Adventures of a Traveler's Heart for my New Year's Eve resolution. My first goal is to finish writing about the trips I took while studying abroad in 2015, when I put blogging on hiatus towards the end of the semester as I attempted to soak...

Torn Between Two Worlds

(Posted a bit late because airport wi-fi didn't work and because I was too exhausted after 24 hours of traveling to post.) I confess that I am a bit behind on travel blogging. Since my last post, I’ve traveled to Barcelona and Granada, experienced Sevilla’s defining Feria de Abril, cheered on both of the city’s...

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...

Global Citizenship

When I hear the words "global citizen," the first thing that comes to my mind is the preamble to the UN Charter. Wow, my Model UN nerd is really coming out tonight!(Sidenote: While I'm here in Spain my Model UN team got to hear Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon speak at the NY conference inside the...

Madrid: A Capital Experience

(Terrible pun intended. Puns are always intended.) I apologize to family and friends for falling behind in my blogging (sorry, Grandma!). I've been busy traveling and studying and living Sevilla! I just got back from a week in Portugal and I also want to share a bit about Semana Santa, but first I'll catch up on the rest of...

Cultural Fusion: Moorish Influence in Spain

  One of my professors at UPO describes Spain as an encrucijada, a crossroads where cultural influences from the Mediterranean, Africa, and Europe collide. To me, one of the most interesting influences is that of the Islamic Conquest  (711-1492) of what is today Spain. This history actually inspired my senior thesis project, which examines the...

Environmental Protection and Sustainability in Spain

One thing that I’ve learned over the course of several international politics classes and my Model UN experience in the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) is that Europe on a whole is much more proactive than the US when it comes to environmental protection. Spain’s Foreign Ministry is serious about mobilizing global efforts to combat climate...

Toledo, Spain: Off the Beaten Track

My family has been bugging me to write about my most recent trip for a couple weeks, but mid-terms studying and a lot of reading for my literature class kept me more than occupied. At long last mid-terms are complete! 5 tests, 4 of which were in Spanish and all of which were straight memorization, opposite of...

Yes, I do actually study.

When I was back in the US gushing over my friends’ study abroad photos, blogs, Instagram posts, etc., it looked as if they were basically taking a semester off to explore the world, which drove me insane as I was stressing out over papers and exams. It seemed like a dream world over there on...