Hi Mom! (Wait- you mean other people are going to read about my travels, too? Awesome!) Hi everyone! My name is Heidi. I’m a fourth year transfer student at Northeastern, and I’ll be blogging about my study abroad experience in Bilbao, Spain this fall. You’ll learn more about me through my writing over the course of the semester, but here are the basics: I’m from St. Louis, Missouri, with passions for vegan baking, theatre of the oppressed, puppies, sculptural crochet, social justice, dinosaurs, spontaneous rainstorms, and all things travel. But now let’s get down to the important stuff about this semester. Where exactly am I going?!
Bilbao is nestled in the mountains just inland from the Northern coasts of Spain, a metropolis where Basque and Spanish cultures collide and blend. It is a center of art and culture but more off the beaten track than more traditional Spanish study abroad sites like Madrid or Barcelona because of its history of industry and political conflict. I hadn’t even heard of it until I began researching study abroad, but I am thrilled to say that the University of Deusto, Bilbao, is where I will be spending this fall. As an anthropology and international affairs major, intersections of cultural difference, international politics, and individual lived experiences are at the core of my academic and personal interests and are at the heart of what I will be exploring during my time in Bilbao. While more recognizable cultural capitals of Spain like Barcelona and Madrid were highly appealing, my primary goal for study abroad is true cultural immersion. The high concentration of study abroad students and tourists in these cities can make it easy to be swept up in a culture of fellow Americans more interested in drinks and cheap thrills rather than focusing on being deliberately situated in the daily lived experiences of Spaniards. Bilbao has a rich heritage, with a smaller, more serious concentration of study abroad students. As an anthropologist, I am also interested in Bilbao as the capital of the Basque region of Spain which has a history of political conflict with the rest of the country and in 1978 was awarded the status of an autonomous nationality.
I arrive in Spain in less than a week, and while many of my fellow Northeastern students preparing to study abroad this fall are probably at home in the final stages of packing, I have already been on the road since the middle of July– first just to visit friends in Chicago and Maryland, then to my cousin’s wedding in Washington, D.C., but since August 11th, I have been in Europe. While I’ve traveled before in Central America, including spending my 11th grade year in Costa Rica with my family, and I spent last fall on a co-op internship in Cambodia, this is my very first time to Europe, and it has been thrilling so far. (Though packing was quarrelsome – I needed summer and winter gear, and was only allowed one checked bag of 44lbs and a regular old backpack to carry-on! Thank goodness I had my mom for her packing expertise!) I spent my first two weeks in Europe traveling with my 17 year old brother through the United Kingdom (London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Bath) and Paris. We get along superbly, and it was great to have a travel buddy, since I usually travel solo. Highlights for me included a tour of the Scottish Highlands with a cruise on Loch Ness (no luck seeing the monster!), exploring all the historic sights of Paris, and dipping in the ancient hot springs that flowed through the Roman baths in (you guessed it) Bath. My brother and I will also proudly admit to being huge nerds, so our other favorite sights were touring the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio (I cried like a baby when I saw the giant Hogwarts filming model), and the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff.
We parted ways in Paris, and I am now halfway through a solo trip in Italy with stops in Venice, Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, some Tuscan hill towns, and the one and only Rome. If that sounds exhausting, that’s because it certainly is, and my poor feet must certainly hate me by now. I won’t say I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, or that it’s been easy. Traveling on a budget and visiting over twelve places in three weeks is hard work, and it is often hard for me to remember to take care of myself when I am so desperate to not miss a single thing. But I certainly have no regrets.
I rediscovered something important about myself while biking around the ramparts of the small, walled town of Lucca, Italy. A concept that has long been important to me is the one of “flow,” a mental place you reach when you are so deeply engrossed in an activity that you lose all sense of time and self and are purely existing passionately and deeply in the moment. Everyone finds their flow in different ways, and you can feel lost and unbalanced if you go through life for too long without losing yourself in it. Your flow might come through running, drawing, or solving complex puzzles. I sometimes reach it through performing on a stage or cooking an elaborate meal.
But I am most deeply in my flow when I am traveling. Specifically, I feel most whole when I am walking alone in a place that I have never been before, simply wandering with no destination or goal but to explore and discover. I find my flow in those quiet stretches when I am so lost in wonder that time and identity don’t make sense at all, and all I know is the secret splendors of this world that is beautiful, strange, and new to me with the turn of every corner. In these moments, I am the most and the least myself, as I become in tune with my environment. Alice Walker wrote, “The more I wonder, the more I love.” This love I feel through the joy of exploration is why I need travel.
I won’t be moving around quite so much once I land in Bilbao in a few days, though my program does include a few trips over long weekends. But the spirit of discovery will persist as I shift from tourist to temporary resident and student of Basque culture and life. I don’t officially have my classes yet, but I will be taking courses exclusively in Spanish, focusing on cultural heritage and language immersion. Fingers crossed that I get into the Spanish through Gastronomy cooking class! Thanks to the aforementioned year in Costa Rica, my Spanish is pretty good but will need brushing up, especially when it comes to grammar! I’m sure it will be up to scruff in no time, though, since my linguistic (and cultural) immersion will extend to my home life as well. I will be living with a host mother, who has asked me to call her Conchita, in her home close to the university. We’ve emailed a bit, and I can’t wait to meet her. More on that in my next post!
My goals for study abroad are to entirely immerse myself in the culture in which I am situated, to find in hands-on experience the applied realities of my academic studies, and to approach each day with an ethnographic magnifying glass and an open heart. I’ll keep you updated every two weeks or so on how my journey is going. Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer. For now, I have Tuscany and Rome left to enjoy before moving on to the next grand adventure. ¡Hasta pronto! See you soon.
