Last summer I studied abroad in Spain for a month. When I signed up, I was pretty excited for the trip. But the closer it got to the departure date, the more anxious I became. The day of departure I was so anxious I felt like I was going to be sick. My dad took me to the airport and stayed with me as far as he could. Luckily a woman in line noticed that I was alone and scared, so she talked to me and that calmed me down a little. Then I found my group members that were just barely recognizable because they were still strangers. I was a bit miserable until after the eight hour plane ride to Madrid when my study abroad group and I started interacting with each other during our layover. I felt much better on the short trip to A Coruña sitting next to two of my group members.

I was glad when we finally arrived at our dorm building and we immediately went into the dining hall. Then we bonded a bit over trying to figure out how to connect to the wifi. That afternoon all seventeen of us students rode the bus into town and got a look around our new temporary home. We found a place to eat, which we returned to often over the month, and we all had a meal together. That was the first time I realized that, despite my anxiety, everything was going to be okay.

The next day I had to realize that for a second time. Our group was going to go out to town again, but there were two different times that we could take the bus. Most people were going to take the 3:30 and some said we’d take the 4:20. As 4:20 approached, no one from my group came to join me in the lobby. I soon realized I was alone because everyone had decided to take the earlier bus. I certainly wasn’t going to go out to town in a foreign country by myself, so I decided to go back to my room. I felt abandoned and was on the verge of tears when I heard someone shout my name. One of my group members came running down the hallway to get me and we ran to the bus together. Turns out the whole group was still on the bus and they had all been trying to contact me. My phone was not yet set up for international use, so it had been on airplane mode and I had had no idea that they were looking for me. So, for the second time, I realized I would be okay. If you’re going to study abroad, just know that the additional cost to use your phone internationally is definitely worth it.

There were some other hiccups on the trip that wound up being just fine, like when I had issues with the lock on my door and my morning routine included hopping out of my window. Honestly, that was a more fun way of exiting my room and some of my group members figured out the problem with the lock so I wouldn’t have to use the window if I didn’t want to. The trip was pretty great and I made some new friends, some of whom I still see and spend time with.

Something I liked about Spain was getting to practice Spanish with native speakers. While I do wish I would have taken advantage of the opportunities to speak with Spaniards more often, it felt pretty nice to be complimented even when I knew I had made mistakes. It’s scary to speak with native speakers because there’s that fear that I’ll sound stupid, but Spaniards are pretty nice and they were just happy that I was trying to speak their language, even if my grammar wasn’t perfect. While a lot of these opportunities were with cashiers, there were also moments where I got to speak with the Spaniards staying in the dorm. Towards the beginning my group mostly stuck to each other, but then a Spanish boy asked a girl from my group to hand him some “mayonesa” in the dining hall and that broke the ice between our two groups. Soon there was a Spain vs America volleyball game in the backyard of the dorm building.

Spain is a beautiful country and I got to see and experience some pretty amazing things, like the San Juan festival, which is the biggest party I’ve ever been to. I also ate octopus for the first time, as well as barnacles. I’ve never been a seafood fan, but the octopus wasn’t terrible. I went to Santiago de Compostela and saw a group of Mexicans that had made the pilgrimage, so excited to be there. I traveled by boat to the beautiful Islas Cies. I went up to the very top of the Tower of Hercules. I saw Picasso's house. I went to Madrid, Segovia, and Ávila. But I think my favorite thing about going to Spain is that I came home with a lot more confidence. I expanded my comfort zone by stepping out of it and it helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin. This experience meant a lot to me and I even got a tattoo of the roman numerals from the name of our dorm building. I'm really glad I went and I'm never going to forget it.