The Who, What, Where, When, Why and How???

WHO:

ME, that's who. I'm Annie. I am a rising junior in college (weird) a Sociology major and Bio minor. Its very exciting for me to say that because it took me two years of college to finally figure it out. I play on the softball team at my college, and I recently made the improv troupe, the Undeniably adjacent.

WHAT:

It is a 5 week, faculty lead program called UMW in Spain. I will be living with a host family and taking two language/culture classes at the Universidad de Duesto. There will be excursions with the group to places like Toledo to see the running of the bulls and all sorts of fun stuff like that!

WHERE: 

 Bilbao. Its in the North of Spain in Basque country. It is (according to Wikipedia) 14 km from the Bay of Biscay and (according to Google Maps) it is about 4 hours and 7 mins from Madrid!

WHEN:

I depart for Madrid on June 26th and I return back to the good ol USofA on July 29th

WHY:

Why not?? The program is relatively cheap, and I got a little scholarship that I applied for. There is no better time than the present and if I wasn't going abroad this summer I would honestly not be doing much of anything productive, so again why not!!??  

HOW:

One day this winter on campus I stumbled upon a Study Abroad booth with tons of informational pamphlets about all the of awesome programs that UMW sponsors. I have always wanted to go abroad but  never saw studying abroad for an entire semester as a viable option because I am on the softball team at UMW and that is sort of a HUGE time commitment. Some of the pamphlets were about 5 to 6 week summer programs, so of course I grabbed about 10 of them and immediately went back to my apartment and read through every single one. Paris and Italy were immediately thrown out because I don't speak Italian or French, all though I do love gelato and Nutella. There was a short program through Germany for Psychology majors which was basically all about Freud. I am all for a good old Psychoanalysis but I'm not a Psych major. So that left Bath, England, Bilbao, Spain and Tunisia. Tunisia I would have gotten the opportunity to learn Arabic and teach English to little humans (children, not midgets) but that idea was shot down as soon as I mentioned Tunisia to my parental units, some business about terrorism and war...pfffft. The England program was full so that leaves us with Spain! This is not to say that Spain was my last choice or my fall back option, but if you know me, any sort of decision is hard let alone the decision of which country to spend 6 weeks of my summer in! During my decision process the Study Abroad office was sooo helpful, I asked tons of annoying questions and they answered all of them without complaint!