Hola! My name's Caroline Phillips and I'm a junior at UNC. I'll be spending the fall semester studying abroad in Granada, Spain.
Granada is a comparatively small city, about the size of Greensboro, in the province of Andalucia in southern Spain. It's about an hour from the southern coast, and it's also at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
When I arrive on September 3rd, I'll be taking classes and living in a homestay with a Spanish family, as well as an American roommate from my program. I'm the only UNC student going, which I'm excited about, not least because it means I can crack on everyone else about basketball.
Hopefully through this blog, I can share my experiences-- which I'm sure will include quite a few embarrassing What Not To Do moments-- with any interested potential travelers out there. And of course, I'm excited about the opportunity to attempt to capture some shadow of the things that make up Spanish culture and share them with you.
I'm nervous about my ability to communicate in Spanish, but I'm thinking I'll probably be completely overwhelmed for the first couple of weeks that I’m there and then start feeling a little more comfortable. That’s the plan, anyway.
When I arrive in Spain, we’re going to spend one night at a hotel in Malaga, a town on the beach, and then take a bus the next day to Granada, where we’ll meet our host families. I just found out about mine a few days ago. I’m living with a mother named María José, her sons Pablo, who’s 18, and Carlos, who’s 25, and their grandmother, Pepa. They live in an apartment which I Google-mapped, and it looks beautiful—all white houses with red roofs and cobblestone streets.
My email says that my host mother’s “cooking is incredible,” which sounds promising. My roommate and I will eat breakfast and lunch at their apartment, and fend for ourselves for dinner. This is exciting because Spanish eating schedules are different from ours—they eat a small breakfast of coffee and toast or something similar, and then at around 3 in the afternoon they have a huge lunch, usually with multiple courses (thus, the traditional siesta that follows.) Then dinner is around 10 p.m. and I believe is a pretty small affair. So eating home-cooked lunches should be pretty fantastic.
The next nine days at home look to be a thrilling blur of packing, weighing my suitcases, unpacking because I packed too much, shopping, eating Southern food for the last time, and saying hello and goodbye at the same time to as many people as possible…
Until next time. Hasta luego!
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
