I’m going back!

Autumn:

Everyone who knows me well knows that I love Spain. The people, the food, the music the memories... I love everything about it. Spain is my home away from home, and I am blessed to have had the opportunity to spend lengthy amounts of time there on four different occasions. The first time was in 2002, when I was an undergraduate student and spent four and half months living with a host family in Sevilla. When I was a graduate student in 2005, I returned as a Teaching Assistant who helped a professor with a four-week summer program for undergraduates in Granada. I repeated this experience in the summer of 2006, except that I was there for five weeks and went to Madrid instead of Granada. In 2015, I won a scholarship through the Embassy of Spain and the AATSP-VA (the American Association of the Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese of Virginia), which allowed me to spend three weeks in Salamanca for a program for American Spanish Teachers. That is when I started this blog the first time. 

This time around, I learned that the AATSP national organization is celebrating their 100th birthday this summer by holding their conference in Salamanca, since the university of Salamanca is turning 800 at the same time. My school was kind enough to provide me with a grant so that I could attend this monumental occasion, and so that I could travel a little bit before and afterwards. Since so much of my trip was funded, I decided to purchase a ticket for Annaleigh to come with me! At the tender age of seven, this will be her first time overseas. We're going to start off in Santander, where we will spend four nights enjoying the beach and other low-key attractions along the Cantabrian coast. We will then travel by bus to Salamanca for the next four nights, where Annaleigh will go to camp while I attend the conference. Finally, we will take a train to Madrid, where we will spend the last few nights of our trip.

We're both incredibly excited, but I am of course pretty nervous. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan, and when we stray from that plan - which will invariably happen as a result of traveling in a very laid-back country alone with a small child - I hope to maintain the flexibility and sense of humor needed to keep both of us safe and happy. Wish us luck!

I'm also adding a contributing writer to this blog, as Annaleigh loves to journal about her day. Therefore, she will have the opportunity to write a few sentences at the beginning or end of each entry. Without further ado, here is Annaleigh's very first blog post:

Annaleigh:

my name is annaleigh i am seven years  old im going to camp in spain i am feeling good about spain.