It is my opinion that every single university student (at the very least) should have the opportunity to study abroad. While learning about a different culture, learning about a new language, a different way of life, is all very admirable in and of itself, what it can teach you about yourself is equally important. An interesting thing to note is that although you will find people representing all the different personalities everywhere, each culture is generally only conducive to a specific few. It is not that one way is superior and another lesser, instead what we should realize is that different people thrive in different environments.

As much as we are shaped by the the culture we are born into, it doesn’t necessarily entail that it is the culture in which we as individuals will thrive. Stepping outside of one’s cultural boundaries allows a person to assess their own background from a different vantage point. This is an important tool for figuring out how you want to structure and to live your life going forward. Instead of limiting yourself to the collective imagination of one area, you can sift through a variety of perspectives until you find what is best suited to you. I am aware that even in writing this I betray my own social conditioning. The way that I view the “self” places me clearly in the area of Western consciousness. I am also aware that it is important to be mindful of cultural boundaries. There are some things and ideas that an individual culture may not want to share with outsiders and it is up to us to respect their wishes. That being said, my own personal study abroad experience in the South of Spain felt less like entering a completely different culture and more like entering a culture that combined my own differing backgrounds.

Allow me to explain further. Spain, especially the Andalusian region, is a region that has been highly influenced by the Middle East and North Africa and thus by Jewish and Arab culture, because of the longstanding Sephardic diaspora and the nearly 800 years of Muslim rulers on the peninsula. Because of this there is a great blend of European and Arab cultural elements. I am of mixed European and Middle Eastern descent and the cultural conflicts I have felt growing up seemed to be mirrored in how Andalucía exists today- a place in-between. Not quite “Arab” but not clearly a part of what is considered “European” either. Although I am white passing in the majority of situations, I have continually existed on the periphery of what is allowed to call itself “white,” and there have been occasions of perfect strangers asking me where I am from (the top contenders seem to be Israel, Italy, and Greece). Not so in Spain! For a completely white person, or a person who is not racially ambiguous, it may not seem to be a big deal, but living in Andalucía was the first time in my life that I got to feel what it is to be ‘anonymous.’ I wandered around the city of Granada, and after the semester ended I traveled around Spain, and everyone assumed I was Spanish like them. Interestingly enough, even when I was on excursions that was mixed between Americans and Spaniards, people still assumed that I was Spanish. This experience of feeling “normal” took away a chunk of underlying stress that I hadn’t even realized that I carried so deeply inside of me. Another thing was the food! All the rice, the olive oil, the garbanzo beans, made me feel like I was a kid again, cooking recipes with my dad that his mother had taught him. I wasn’t homesick for a moment of my time in Spain. All the study abroad organizers had warned us about the cultural differences, about crime and being safe, etc, but everyone I met was so kind and I never felt unsafe at all. Obviously people shouldn’t act recklessly, but often there is this idea of the “danger” of going to a foreign country and honestly I don’t think that unless there is a specific crisis going on, that going anywhere is more dangerous than living in the United States.

The other thing I loved a lot about being in Spain, specifically in Granada, was just the sense of history that indundated everything. In the United States our “history” is relatively young and a building that is more than 100 years old is considered old. Obviously indigenous history is older than that, but there aren’t really any indigenous cultural monuments on the East Coast. Meanwhile, I visited a “hammam” that was over 900 years old. 900! Can you imagine?! Every day I was but a 20 minute walk from a UNESCO World Heritage site. While I was in Granada I visited the Alhambra at least once a week, often two or three times. Although I only got to go inside the Muslim palaces twice, because it is so hard to get entrance tickets, I was mesmerized. 

We were lucky that we got to go there first during the winter because there weren’t as many tourists which meant that we got lots of great photos of the architecture sans humans. During the semester as well, I did some traveling outside of Spain. I had been talking to this girl online for a couple years but she lived in the U.K. We finally got to meet, in Edinburgh where she went to school, and now we’re dating. I visited her a couple more times during the semester, first in Scotland and then in northern England with her family. She’s coming to visit the U.S. the second week of January and I am so excited. Anyways, this is a shoutout to all my lesbians looking for love- you might just find it in a foreign country! All in all, my study abroad experience was more than I could have ever imagined and I am so glad I got to spend a little over 5 months of my life living in such a beautiful city as Granada. My advice is that if you have even the slightest interest in studying abroad, and you have the opportunity, take it! It may not change your whole life, but it will certainly change your perspective and that can be equally important to how you approach the rest of your life. 

Pictured above: Me acting extra at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland.