The Adventures Begin

Hello Readers,

This marks my first blog post of many this summer.  Over the next few months I will be traveling to both Seville, Spain for a month-long study abroad program through Texas Tech and to Washington, DC to work as a Congressional Intern for Representative Pete Olson (TX-22).  I will be consistently sharing experiences about both of these trips throughout the summer.  This is partially because it's required for both programs but also partially because I enjoy writing.

For those of you who know me well, you definitely understand that my procrastination tendencies get me into trouble sometimes.  My flight to Spain leaves this afternoon, so naturally I finished packing this morning.  I never expected packing for this trip to take as long as it did.  I started yesterday afternoon but after doing laundry, going shopping, picking up travel maps from AAA, checking in online for flights, etc, the list seemed to go on and on.  There is definitely something about international trips that adds a layer of stress to packing.   When traveling around the US, it's easy to pick up a missing phone charger, toothpaste, or shoes, but overseas it's not as simple.  Parts are different, chargers are incompatible, sizes don't fit giants like me. After going through my bags a couple times, I think I've got pretty much everything, but it seems there's always something missing.  Things hardly ever go exactly according to plan.  But that's part of the adventure.

I am incredibly excited to study abroad, but that doesn't mean I'm not nervous.  I definitely am a bit. One reason is that I'll be living with a Spanish host family for the next month.  My Spanish language ability is definitely not great, and I'm expecting the most challenging part of the trip will be handling the language barrier.  The host families only speak Spanish to us, so that'll add a challenge for sure.

My roommate over in Spain will be a friend from school,  Sagar.  He's from New Mexico, so he's also had a decent amount of exposure to Spanish growing up.  Both of us also took Spanish in high school, so between the two of us, I'm hoping we'll be able to survive.

I'm about to finish tying up loose ends before the flight this afternoon, so the next post will be from Seville!  Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Joseph