Looking back on my study abroad in Spain, I could tell people stories about how I learned how strong and independent I can be, how I was always late to class because the train never showed up (except on the last day, just my luck), or that time I asked a random lady if my friends and I could pet her dog so our teacher could take a photo of us, the dog, and its confused owner (it was an adorable Shiba Inu by the way). Oddly enough, none of those are the stories that I tell people. When people ask me about my time in Spain, I tell them the story of how I sliced my hand wide open in search of an octopus. So, how’d that happen, and why do I lead with that?
During my study abroad, my group and I were able to do a lot of activities involving Santander’s environment. Santander is a brilliant, cultured jewel located on Spain’s northern coastline close to the French border. Naturally, one of the educational activities I could do was to explore tide pools at night in search of marine life. Why at night? Well, at various stages of the tide, different types of marine life are more visible and active. My group and I explored night tide pools during low tide to see what kind of animals are nocturnal. Since it was night, there wasn’t anyone else around, so we had the area to ourselves. During our search, we discovered a few snails, some fish, sea urchins, and a lot of starfish. My group and I were satisfied with our findings, but our leader was not. He wanted to see if we could find something even better: an octopus.
So with that directive, my group and I were determined to find this mysterious, eight-legged slippery cephalopod. Since it’s a tide pool, the creature couldn’t be very big, and it would blend in with the water due to the lack of lighting and its natural camouflage. Not too long after, we made a discovery! In a rush to get over there, I tripped over a gigantic rock. I mean, bad lighting, tennis shoes, and slippery surfaces make up the perfect recipe for disaster! I cut my hand open on a jagged rock. While my friends were talking with the leader of the group, I was freaking out, thinking “do I have to get stitches? What are hospitals in Spain like? Am I going to die from some bacterial infection?” you know, normal thoughts someone would have during an event like this. Finally, the medical personnel who came with us examined my hand and proceeded to tell me “Cálmate. No vas a morir” (“Calm yourself. You’re not going to die”) to get me to stop freaking out. Thankfully the cut wasn’t that deep, and I was freaking out over nothing. Oops! At least we got to see the octopus, so that was fun! Definitely worth the injury to see it.
So why do I tell that story? Out of all the cool things I did, such as flying thousands of miles alone at sixteen to a foreign country, living with amazing people in an incredible town, and learning to communicate in Spanish and to advocate for myself (mostly because that stupid train never showed and I needed to learn the bus route), I’ll always choose to tell the story about the octopus and my injury first. Mostly because being by the ocean, in the middle of the night, running to find an octopus in a tidal pool… Well, that is about as far from my hometown experience as you can get. Plus, the memory really left a mark on me, literally. My left hand has a faded scar to prove it. The experience was so surreal, and I would give everything to go back to that night to relive it (and to maybe give myself a flashlight and better footwear).