{"id":11447,"date":"2025-12-03T22:27:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=11447"},"modified":"2025-12-03T22:27:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:27:00","slug":"lucy-flacks-study-away-experience","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-november-2025\/lucy-flacks-study-away-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucy Flack&#8217;s Study Away Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by Lucy Flack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>As I\u2019m writing this, I am approaching my last month in Granada, Spain, for my study away term. There is a quote by Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2014a famous poet, author, and playwright born and raised in Granada\u2014that I think about daily when considering how to make the most of what\u2019s left of my time here: \u201cVerlo todo, sentirlo todo.\u201d This roughly translates to: \u201cSee everything, feel everything.\u201d And so, I\u2019ve tried to see and feel everything I can while in Granada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My study abroad program offers a course on Lorca, which I am taking this term. I can\u2019t express how surreal it has been to read Lorca\u2014a poet I have read and admired since high school\u2014while in Granada, his birthplace and muse. In class, we have not only read some of Lorca\u2019s work (barely scratching the surface, really, because Lorca <em>lo hizo todo<\/em>\u2014he did it all), but we also visited the house in which he was born, the site at which he was killed, and his neighbor\u2019s house that inspired his famous play, <em>La casa de Bernarda Alba<\/em>. Lorca was assassinated in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, and so, as you can imagine, visiting the site of his murder was a very difficult and profound experience. The site is what seems like an unassuming forest, but when you step into it and approach the site itself, it\u2019s almost as if the air stands still itself.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I find Granada as a city to be very intentional and poetic. <em>Granada <\/em>means \u201cpomegranate\u201d in Spanish, and so pomegranates are hidden everywhere. They are on the fountains, in the graffiti, on the sewer grates, on curtains in shop windows. And there are pomegranate trees around, especially at the base of the <em>sabika<\/em>, the hill on which the Alhambra sits! Granada is a city of such rich history, tucked in a valley in the Sierra Nevadas. It was the last city to fall to the Catholic conquest, so the legacy of Islamic architecture is strongest here out of anywhere in Spain\u2014a lot of which I\u2019ve been privileged enough to see, because I am also taking an Islamic Art and Architecture (especially in Granada) class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But enough academics! What are some fun things I\u2019ve done while abroad? Here are some highlights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>At the beginning of the term when it was still summer, we hiked mountains and then rewarded ourselves by swimming in the brilliantly blue-green Mediterranean!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In late October, we went to Morocco as a program! The people there were some of the most hospitable people I\u2019ve ever met, and the sunrise over Chefchauouen (the Blue City) was one of the most beautiful things I\u2019ve ever seen! I also enjoyed petting all the stray dogs and cats. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I\u2019ve been reading a lot, and trying to read in beautiful places! Some of my favorites have been the terrace on the top of my study center, Lorca park, the vantage point San Nicolas overlooking the Alhambra, and my favorite cafe of Granada: La Qarmita. I\u2019ve also been working on my bookstagram account (@lucys.lib) which has been massively fun.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>For anyone that\u2019s nervous about speaking a foreign language abroad, it gets so much better once you get there. I\u2019m someone who was paralyzed with nerves when asked to speak Spanish (sorry to my profs) and now I am speaking Spanish everyday and improving massively. There is truly <em>nothing <\/em>that improves your abilities more than speaking it in an everyday setting. I would argue I\u2019ve learned more this semester than I have in my 14 years of learning Spanish in some capacity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I\u2019ve started junk journaling to document all the places I\u2019ve been while abroad! I\u2019ve been around Spain, Porto (Portugal), Morocco, and I am going to Edinburgh in December!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Genuinely, everything in Granada is beautiful, and I can say confidently that it is my favorite city that I have ever had the pleasure of visiting\/living in. It is my home away from home! Though I\u2019m excited to return to my other home away from home: the Mac English Department.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Lucy Flack As I\u2019m writing this, I am approaching my last month in Granada, Spain, for my study away term. There is a quote by Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2014a famous poet, author, and playwright born and raised in Granada\u2014that I think about daily when considering how to make the most of what\u2019s left of my [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1025,"featured_media":0,"parent":11441,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11447","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11449,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11447\/revisions\/11449"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}