The First Post

When I first made my website in my marketing class.

After I applied for my Spanish visa.

The day I received my visa.

The weekend I said goodbye to my best friends.

Sitting in the airport waiting to fly out.

I’ve made a run at writing this post so many times before today. Each of these moments were ones that I had wished for the time and energy to start writing, to finally start tracking this story. Now, I sit on a flight headed directly from Toronto to Madrid to spend the next ten months of my life living in Pamplona, an adorable little city in northern Spain. There, I’ll be attending the Universidad Publica de Navarra for the third year of my Bachelor of International Business program at Carleton University.

The first time this program required me to move, I went from my small Alberta town and graduating class of twenty kids to a university lecture hall of 300 students and a city transit system that I had no clue how to navigate (so terribly that we ended up in a city across the border for five hours with no way back).

Right now, I can’t completely compare my first move to the second. I can’t tell you what makes me feel at home and what makes me miss home. I don’t know who I’ll make friends with or how I’ll find taking classes in a different language. What will I do on the weekends? What will the best food be in each city? How do I like the weather? I don’t know yet.

However, I’m not all empty answers. I have two years of experience in trying to figure out which place I wanted to be headed to on this flight and planning how to get here. For those who don’t have the time for my endless stories today, here is my summed-up timeline of the past few months (for those who do have the time, you know how to reach me):

• First year, first semester – the very first International Business class where I met many of my best friends and first heard stories about the exchange year. Our program was over 90 people at this point, making us a small but adorable and close little community. 
• First year, both semesters – we took our first Spanish classes and started choosing our favourite schools. Our language families were always our closest pals as we spent over 8 hours of language classes together each week, not including all of our other classes! 
• Second year, first semester – we applied for exchange! This meant that we rated all our options from best to worst and crossed our fingers that we would be placed in our top choice.Our Spanish stream had 14 different schools available in 6 countries (Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Mexico). Each school offered 1-3 spots, depending on how many students that school would send to Carleton in return. 
• Second year, both semesters – the advanced Spanish courses made us write essays and give presentations about our future host countries (in Spanish, of course)
• Second year, second semester – placement emails were sent out and we received acceptance letters from our host universities! The placements were decided based on GPA - those with the highest GPA had the first choice, second highest had second choice, etc.
• Summer between second and third year – visa process application, buying the plane ticket, booking my spot at residence, and many more little bases that needed covering (I’ll dive in more detail about this in another blog very soon)
• Start of third year – getting on this plane and flying out!!

Needless to say, the past two years have been quite a lead-up filled with many presentations, meetings, classes and excitement. I can’t wait to see if I’m able to put these preparations to good use over the next few weeks (though, my love for Google Translate will have to be the judge of that).  

Until the next post,

-        - Al