As the spring semester gets underway and I’m slowly becoming swamped with work, I can’t help but think back to happier times during winter break and intersession, when I studied abroad in Spain for one month. What a fun time!
I took part in the Hopkins Intersession in Salamanca, Spain program (link: https://jhu-sa.terradotta.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10353) from late December until late January, during which I took two classes for graded credit. Salamanca is a university city in Spain, located about two hours northwest of Madrid; it’s close to Portugal.
There were approximately 20 Hopkins students on the trip, so we all stayed with different Spanish host families. I shared one host family with two other girls from Hopkins. Salamanca is an extremely walkable city and my host family lived only a 10-minute walk away from the school where we took classes. We were also 15 minutes away from the Plaza Mayor, or “Main Plaza” of Salamanca.
The Plaza Mayor was my favorite place in the city. I loved how the sandstone glowed in the afternoon sun and how the square was lit up at night under the deep blue night sky. When we first arrived in Salamanca, there was a big Christmas gift box light display set up in the center of the square to celebrate Christmas and “El Día de los Reyes,” or the “Day of the Kings” (you can think of it as a Spanish version of Christmas).
We had classes every day, one being a Spanish Language course and one being a Spanish Culture course. You’ll take a different Spanish Language course depending on your current level/Spanish class, but everyone takes the same Spanish Culture course. It comes out to about four hours of language class a day, five times a week; the culture class was held about three times a week, with a weekend excursion every weekend. We visited Segovia, Madrid, and Seville during our three weekends in Spain! We also had afternoon trips to local sights in Salamanca, like St. Stephen’s Convent or the Old and New Cathedrals of Salamanca.
Between classes, we would walk home and eat with our host family for lunch. Spaniards eat a late lunch, around 1-2 pm, and we also had time to take a daily siesta! As a chronically tired student and, frankly, person, the afternoon nap was wonderful. However, I also loved to roam around the city during my free time and visit all sorts of cute cafes.
After classes and before dinner, I would go out for tapas with friends since the typical Spanish dinner is often eaten at 8:30 pm or 9 pm. Tapas culture is part of daily life in Spain and became something I loved during my time there.
Tapas are small plates, kind of like an appetizer, but nothing huge. You can order them individually at a tapas place, or if you’re in a bar they’ll give you a small something to nibble on when you order a drink. Going on a “tapas crawl” – when you visit one tapas place for a tapa, then visit another place for another tapa, and rinse and repeat – was one of my favorite things to do.
Stay tuned for my next articles about Salamanca and travel reviews of where I visited on the weekends!