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Category: Madrid, Spain

JONATHAN HAZIN | MADRID, SPAIN | POST 3

JONATHAN HAZIN | MADRID, SPAIN | POST 3

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Featured image: Overlooking the Roman entry bridge to Córdoba As October has turned into November, Madrid has adopted another mood for me. There is quite a long summer here that extends well into September, but fall does not last for more than a few weeks. The leaves do change colors, even beautifully in some parks and in the suburbs, but the season transitions all too quickly into what I like to call “pre-winter.” “Pre-winter” hovers around 55 degrees Fahrenheit (and…

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JONATHAN HAZIN | MADRID, SPAIN | POST 2

JONATHAN HAZIN | MADRID, SPAIN | POST 2

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Featured image: The stunning outside of the Guggenheim museum, designed by Frank Gehry.   While there is still plenty to write about Madrid, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about a weekend trip I recently took to Bilbao. One of the nicest things about studying in Madrid is its centrality within Spain; by design, the capital city is quite literally in the geographic center of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), so traveling just about anywhere in Spain…

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JONATHAN HAZIN | MADRID, SPAIN | POST 1

JONATHAN HAZIN | MADRID, SPAIN | POST 1

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Featured image: Looking out at the neighborhood of Salamanca, Madrid Going into the college process way back in Spring 2015, I knew that wherever I went I would want to study abroad my junior year. Maybe not for the whole year – one only gets to spend four years at college (if everything goes as planned, anyway) – but definitely for one semester. I had a few years of Spanish behind me from high school and middle school, and though…

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Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 5

Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 5

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Some people are really well-suited to the study abroad experience. I am absolutely not one of those people. But after five months of perpetual angustia, I think I’m finally okay with this. Granted, I’m peacing out in less than a week, and the light at the end of the tunnel is doing wonders for my mood. The terrifying prospect of final exams worth up to 65% of my grades, however, is not. According to the dozens of study abroad blogs…

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Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 4

Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 4

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Each time I post one of these things, I imagine getting something like this in the comments: “Jackson, you’re the worst travel blogger I’ve ever read! You never travel! Why did you even go to Spain when there are plenty of libraries on this continent in which you could loiter?!” And yet here you are reading this, so I have to assume you’re not here for the travel. You’ve come because, like a turtle flipped onto its back, my semester…

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Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 3

Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 3

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La Universidad Carlos III reminds me of Vassar in the sense that there are, in fact, students here and also buildings, with chairs and desks. The similarities end there. In some ways, this has been a welcome change. As much as I love Vassar, there came a point when the novelty wore off just a bit. And while Vassar’s student body of almost 2,500 dwarfed my high school’s (roughly 120, grades 9 – 12), you’d be amazed how claustrophobic the…

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Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 2

Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 2

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At the end of our orientation in Granada, I found myself in another airport, desperately wanting to miss another flight. Not wanting to get on planes has kind of become my thing lately. At that point, I had decided that Spain might end up being okay. I mean, really, Grenada was a sweet gig. All I had to do was sit through three hours of exceptionally boring classes each morning and then Nicolás (our dauntless director) would herd us through…

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Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 1

Jackson Ingram | Madrid, Spain | Post 1

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Ironically, I’m writing my first blog post about Spain while on my way back to the United States. The plane is almost empty—I guess not many people have to make a day-trip to Chicago—and it’s the perfect time to finally force myself to write this because I’m so sure nothing else exciting can happen before my deadline. Please God let me be right. My creative writing professors told me not to start any piece of writing with a flashback, but…

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Mija Lieberman | Madrid, Spain | Post 5

Mija Lieberman | Madrid, Spain | Post 5

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In less than 10 days I will be leaving Madrid. I can’t believe how quickly this semester has gone by. I can’t say that I’m not excited to be going home, though. I’m leaving Spain when the program ends on December 20th like everyone else, and then I fly out of London on Christmas Eve and arrive home to California that same evening because of the time difference. This is the longest I have ever been away from home and…

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Michael Gambardella | Madrid, Spain | Post 4

Michael Gambardella | Madrid, Spain | Post 4

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Now that the end of my time abroad is just around the corner, I’ve decided to reflect on experience in Spain and create a list of advice that I wish someone had told me when I first got here.   Experiment with different ways of getting around early on. You may think you have found the most efficient way to get to school or your favorite cafe, but there are usually other alternative routes or methods that are easier, quicker,…

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