Updates

t-minus 20 days

Since my departure is less than 3 weeks away (eek!), I thought that this would be a perfect time to share some info that I’ve gotten in the last few months. I’ve split this section into a few sections and added some pictures to make everything easy to find.

Housing

Just this week, I received my ~finalized~ housing placements. I’ll be living with a host mom and one other BC student. My host mom’s name is Emilia, she’s a retired teacher, and she has 3 kids. Two of them live in Switzerland, and one of them lives in Granada with his wife and 3 kids; I’m super excited because they come over to visit a lot! I’ll have my own room and then share a bathroom with Gillian, the other BC student who I’m sharing my host mom with. I’ve added some photos below.

The apartment that we’re living in is on the 3rd/top floor of a building located in Plaza Bib Rambla. This plaza is beautiful, with lots of shops and cafés, and it’s located right near the Granada Cathedral, which is absolutely stunning. I live in one of the most central parts of the city, and my walk to school is about 15-20 minutes. But, more importantly, I’m only about a 10 minute walk from the famous street that has lots of bars, and about a 5-10 minute walk from the nearest Zara!

An overview of the area I’m living in. My address is marked in red, and the Cathedral is super close!

The plaza that my apartment is located in!

Departure & Flights

I leave the U.S. on January 8th (Saturday) and arrive the next day on the 9th! The 9th is our official mandatory arrival day because the program officially starts on Monday, January 10th. Because Granada is a smaller city (almost exactly the size of Madison!), it takes a long time to get there. I’m flying out of O’Hare (Chicago), then from Chicago to JFK (New York City), JFK to Madrid, and finally Madrid to Granada, for a total of a 14.5 hour travel day. Here’s a little look at my flight schedule:

Chicago to JFK — 3:45 PM - 7 PM (2 hrs 15 min with time difference)

JFK to Madrid — 9 PM - 10:15 AM (7 hrs 15 min with time difference)

Madrid to Granada — 12 PM - 1:10 PM

Another BC student is on my flight from Madrid to Granada, so if anything goes wrong on the last leg of my journey, at least I’ll have someone to commiserate with hahaha. Once I arrive in Granada, Teresa (one of the directors of our program) picks us up and will drop me off at my host mom’s apartment.

Program

The program that I’m a part of is officially called GRIIS: Granada Institute for International Studies. The cohort is typically made up of 5-10 BC students, 10-15 students from University of Delaware, and 5-10 students from other small schools near Boston. There’s 6 of us total from BC, so I’ll have 5 other BC kids with me. I’ll meet all of the other students from other schools when I get there. (I’ll be posting something soon with links to my Instagram accounts etc. and will include the GRIIS program’s instagram in that post!)

GRIIS operates under Universidad de Granada (University of Granada). The university is the 3rd largest in Spain. There’s of course normal Spanish students that attend the school like I attend BC. There’s a department under the University called the Center for Modern Languages, and this center “houses” all of the programs for US students studying abroad and European students doing their Erasmus program. So, I’ll be taking classes with students from my program and students from the other programs, lots of Americans and lots of Europeans!

A Spanish woman named Amalia is the director of our program, and another woman, Teresa, helps out and goes everywhere with us as well! I got to meet both of them virtually, as well as the other BC Granada students, at our orientation on Zoom a few weeks ago. I’ve talked with quite a few former BC students who were in Granada in 2019 and 2020, and they all said that Amalia and Teresa are the best and act like everyone’s moms, so I’ll be in good hands:)

Classes

Earlier this week I picked my classes for the semester. When I get to Granada, I’ll take a Spanish intensive course for 3 weeks and that’ll be my only class during that time. Then, we start our actual classes in February when all of the students get back to the university. I’ll be taking 5 classes: 1) GRIIS seminar (a seminar with everyone in my program, taught by Amalia, our program director), 2) Speaking Skills and Writing Texts in Spanish (the class I chose to fulfill our mandatory grammar requirement), and 3 electives: Spanish Civilization and Culture, Religious Diversity and Culture in Medieval Spain, and La Transición: From Franco’s Dictatorship to Today’s Democratic Spain. I’ll receive my final class schedule when I get to Granada, so my classes might change a bit, but for now those classes are what I’m hoping for.

The biggest change in my classes is that they’ll all be in Spanish. But, I’m not too worried because I won’t be taking any courses with native Spanish speakers. Every student in all of my classes will have Spanish as their second language, and all of the professors know that. So, they will definitely be understanding and patient, and everyone says that the language isn’t a tough thing to get used to, especially if you’ve been taking Spanish for a long time like I have!

… until January!

I’ll publish a post soon with the usernames of my Instagram account I’m making for abroad and the GRIIS account, and then some other details. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, and I’ll be back on here soon with more posts!

xoxo