June 4, 2012

Republished from their personal blog with permission from the authors, we’re going to catch up with Gamecock volleyball student-athletes Cara Howley and Lindsey Craft during their trip to Spain as part of their international business program. Content may be edited from its original form. These were originally posted on May 29.

We are sitting at the bus station, and it just hit us that we will be leaving Spain tomorrow afternoon. After packing up everything into our suitcases (it’s a miracle it all fit), Rosario essentially kicked us out this afternoon and prematurely drove us to the bus station. Luckily, we have been here so many times we love it and have time to relive a lot of memories from this trip. First of all, has it really been a month? Second, did we really get A’s in our classes? And third, do we really have to leave? Although we can’t wait to get home and pick up our lives right where we left off, we are going to miss many things about Spain.

What we will miss:

• Beautiful cathedrals everywhere we look
• chocolate bombas after our history class
• people watching in the plaza mayor
• getting in uncomfortable situations due to our lack of Spanish speaking ability
• the shopping
• our classmates from all over the world
• our slightly sarcastic but very humorous mujeres en España teacher
• cafe con leche and galletas in the morning
• eating unknown food for lunch and pretending to like it
• the long avanza bus rides back and forth to Madrid
• the random events that Spaniards celebrate (we never knew when they were happening)
• sonsoles our very serious but nice grammar teacher
• the creepy Spanish movies that we never fully understood
• sitting in cafe rastrel in our pajamas at night to use the WiFi
• sitting in cuatro gatos (a local coffee shop) and writing our essays
• the workout machines in the park
• hearing Spanish being spoken absolutely everywhere
• the walks to and from school every day
• the SIESTAS
• the European styles
• our very small room and twin beds we shared for a month
• all of the little ways Spain changed our lives in such a short time period

I’m sure there are hundreds of more reasons, but it wouldn’t all fit on one blog post! Tomorrow at this same time, we will be meeting Juliette at the airport and driving back to her house in Belgium. We can’t wait to see our close friend (and conveniently translator/tour guide) so soon. Adios España! Bonjour Belgium!