Adventures of a Traveler's Heart
"…tengo un cierto espiritillo acá dentro, que a grandes cosas me lleva." -Miguel de Cervantes
After studying abroad in Spain for a semester, my friend Alayna and I planned to stay in Europe two weeks after to travel. We deliberated where we should go during the first couple months of studying abroad and decided upon Germany and Austria. Originally, we considered adding more cities in Germany and Austria plus in... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
It has been over a year since I’ve written on this blog. I keep meaning to catch up on blogging my travels, but graduating and starting grad school and just doing life have been getting in the way. Now that I’ve survived grad school semester one, what better way to relax over winter break than... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
A couple weeks ago (yes, I’m still behind on blogging my adventures, I know), Semana Santa took Sevilla by storm, which meant spring break #1 for us. Yes, we have two spring breaks; it’s kind of wonderful. TCU students went all over for break, but Alayna and I decided to slow down a bit and vacation... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
Last weekend I made it to my third continent, Africa! With my roommate, Alayna, and 100 other students in a Discover Excursions group, I traveled to several cities in Morocco. While in general I prefer to avoid touristy travel groups, I do not speak Arabic and my French is rusty, so I felt this was a... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
Thursday afternoon, two of my roommates, Alayna and Courtney, and I decided that we wanted to take a day trip this weekend after all, despite our original plan of using this weekend to get settled with school, rest from an exhausting two days of classes (which isn’t that bad, except that operating completely in a... Continue Reading →
Adventures of a Traveler's Heart 