With a heavy heart, I’m said to say this our last stop on this Global Health journey. But I’m happy to announce our final stop is certainly a show-stopper full of food, flamenco, and architecture. Welcome to Barcelona! Barcelona is the second biggest city in Spain, but we did our best trying to explore the…
Tag: summer 2025
Ali’s Global Health Journey: A New Country and a New Continent
Before my travels to Spain, I had never left the North America continent. Yet on this study abroad trip, I went to not one but two new continents! After a couple of weeks studying global health in Málaga, we traveled across the Gibraltar Strait to Morocco. Immediately after coming to port in Morocco, I felt…
Ali’s Journey Through Spain: Málaga Edition
After a month of waiting at home, excitedly preparing for my 3 week trip to Spain and Morocco, the time had finally come! It was time to travel thousands of miles and leave the North American continent for this first time. Immediately after landing in Málaga, the host city for the my program called Global…
Saying Goodbye To Ireland
Studying abroad in Ireland was honestly a life-changing experience for me, not just academically, but personally. Going into it, I knew I’d be learning about a different healthcare system and experiencing a new culture, but I didn’t expect how much I’d grow outside of the classroom. Being in a completely new environment where I didn’t…
Linguistic Diversity to Herbal Remedies: Exploring a New Culture in Suriname
Dutch? Mandarin? Sarnami Hindustani? At first, I thought this diverse range of languages reflected on posters and advertisements was solely because we were making our way through Suriname’s International Airport. However, during our 40-minute long shuttle ride into the city, I noticed that this inclusive language and messaging was actually embedded throughout the country. From…
Alcalá, Hasta Luego
Studying in Spain was the biggest step out of my comfort zone I have ever taken. This period of time forced me into assuming a strong sense of independence unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I was living in a space where I had to completely rely on myself to communicate with a different…
Four Trains, Three Cabs, and Two Buses in One Weekend
Three weeks into the program, I was starting to feel more settled in Alcalá. Classes were in full swing, the town was familiar, and traveling in Spain was far less intimidating than when I arrived. I felt very comfortable and in control of navigating the country independently. I was also planning on visiting Málaga over…
Living Quirks with a Spanish Host
You can’t know the things that you don’t know until presented with the opportunity to learn. I often found that major cultural differences—siestas, late-night dinners, and a relaxed sense of time—were not too difficult to get accustomed to as they were daily occurrences established early on. Throughout my experience in Spain, the main sources of…
Déjà Vu of Freshman Year: Initial Reactions to Spain
A person’s first semester of college is such a unique period of time. It ends almost as quickly as it started, but many look back on it with nostalgia. That newfound sense of independence with fresh faces and unfamiliar places only happens once. I could hardly believe it when that same feeling returned as I…
Captivated in Dublin
My first true “wow” or “aha” moment while studying abroad in Ireland came on my second full day there. That was the moment it really hit me that I was in a completely different country, immersed in a new culture. The first day had been exciting, of course, but there was still a sense of…