A Month in Granada

This year in January I was lucky enough to spend a month studying in Granada, a city in the South of Spain. I attended an intensive language course at the Universidad de Granada, which I found very challenging because I had no experience with Spanish prior to my trip.

Most of my friends laughed when I said I was traveling to Spain to attend classes completely in Spanish. When I arrived, I realised exactly how challenged I was going to be. I met ten other Australians prior to starting classes and learned that all had studied Spanish in some form of another. Even so, I decided to have a go and see how well I could do and ended doing quite well. The first few classes were very tricky, and I had to listen carefully and ask my smarter friends for help with my homework and understanding basic concepts from class. Soon I caught up, could understand most of what was said in class and had a fantastic time.

Over the month, I stayed in a residence in Granada, and visited four cities across the south of Spain: Seville, Cordoba, Malaga, Mallorca, and Marrakech. Our host university took us on many excursions, to the first two of these cities and to the Alhambra and many other attractions in Granada. We often attended these excursions with other international students who had come to study from France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. On Mondays we attended an Intercambio where we talked with students from all over Spain who were learning English, and we were able to practise our respective languages with native speakers.

Our residence also had many friendly Spanish students who invited us out just about every night and made us feel more than welcome in Granada. I had a great time with everyone I met and still talk to many of the students and locals I met overseas.

After our course, two of my friends and I visited Morocco for a week. We travelled around the country on a bus with seven Catalonians- unplanned, we met them on the bus. I was unbelievably able to chat to them as we travelled across the north of Africa. We spent nights in towns I still struggle to pronounce and rode camels through the Sahara. For anyone considering a Global Short Program, or who has an interest in improving their Spanish should strongly consider Granada as their place of study.

Burrow, Thomas

Global Short Program Student