It’s hard to believe that we have been in Spain with the same 30 people for an outrageous four weeks. In the beginning talking to people other than your roommate seemed horribly awkward, but we have made friends and created interesting bonds with everyone.

With these strange relationships comes funny ways to remember everyone’s names, inside jokes, and funny connections that only this select group will understand. The first night Brian forced us to learn each other’s names with a “fun” game. Each person had to say their name and one interesting thing about him or herself and then the following person had to repeat the previous names and interesting tidbits. Although this seemed torturous, it has really helped and we rarely forget that Jessica Tramp was on a TRAMPoline team, Dustin knows a LITTLE bit of jujitsu, Zoe mudslides (whatever that entails), Ross rock climbs, Peter films things and Amir is good at remembering names.

In addition to getting to know each other, we also laugh constantly at the inside jokes we’ve developed during the program! Although you won’t understand any of these, I will try my best to fill you in on the “chistes” of the group. After visiting what seemed like a million igelsias, we have come to the understanding that every church was once a mosque, legitimately. “Our study abroad used to be a mosque, but now it’s a cathedral.” With the mix of people from many different states we’ve learned the regional lingo that stems from each differing group. Now things that are cool can be “hella wet,” “superguay,” or even “dank.” We spend a lot of time of the bus, but unfortunately the exact time can be skewed depending on who is in charge. 2-hour bus rides are actually only 10 minutes (which makes things rather annoying when you fell asleep thinking it’s siesta time and wake up 10 minutes later to the lovely alarm clock we like to call Brian.) As Americans we notice the words used most frequently by the Spaniards around us. When it’s time to go, time to move, or just because, Rosanna and Bernardo seem to be screaming the words VENGA, VAMOS in our faces, and the only words that seem to work in response are “tranquilo, tranquilo.” Overall our group has become so close and we share so many unforgettable memories!

Margi Tysor
Granada Summer 2 2011
Houston, TX

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 at 9:23 am and is filed under GRA Summer 2, GRANADA (GRA), Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.