{"id":21332,"date":"2022-12-16T07:45:45","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T12:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/?p=21332"},"modified":"2022-12-16T14:16:11","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T19:16:11","slug":"final-blog-john-kirkley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2022\/12\/16\/final-blog-john-kirkley\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Blog – John Kirkley"},"content":{"rendered":"I just got back home after traveling to Oviedo, Asturias, Spain for the Fall\n2022 semester. I loved every moment I spent in Spain: learning the language,\nthe culture, and enjoying my first time in Europe by traveling to various\ncountries.\n\n\n\nOverall, Europe is quite westernized, meaning there are not grand culture\nshocks when comparing it to living in the United States; however, I will say\nthat Spanish people tend to have a more relaxed style of living, where the\nclock is not as important, yet they still maintain their “efficiency”\nwith tasks.\n\n\n\nI quite enjoyed this less stressed style of life, it allowed me to\nunderstand that not knowing what you will be doing next is okay, and if things\ndo not go the way you want, you can still have a fulfilling life. Furthermore,\nthere is more of a compartmentalization of the self in which one can be a\nstudent who studies every day and receives almost perfect notes, yet at night\nor on the weekends, they can be the exact opposite: going out, living carefree\nas if they do not have to study anything ever again.\n\nI think any American can go to Spain and be perfectly fine; Spain is a\ntourist country with lots of people from all over the world coming to visit,\nwork, and learn. As opposed to what our intuition may tell us, Spain actually\nis very secular, and also very progressive. They have much stronger and much\nmore defined anti-discrimination laws regarding LGBTQ+ and other minority groups.\nFurthermore, queerness is normalized within Spain so you do not have to worry\nabout a hate crime as opposed to the United States \u2013 even the older generation.\n\nIn school, we rarely learn about Spain except about maybe a bullet point on\nthe Spanish Inquisition, but almost 40 years ago, Spain was controlled by a\ndictator which means that people our parents\u2019 age lived under a dictatorship. This\nshapes their perspectives on democracy and their ideals about how a democracy should\nfunction. I thought this idea of living under a fascist dictator changed their\napproach and their intracultural relationships. Almost every area of Spain has\nsome kind of independence movement \u2013 the most famous being in Catalunya and\nVasque Region. Thus, they have a strong regional identity with many languages\nwithin each region as well which is very different from the United States which\ncan appear as a singular hegemony of culture.\n\nI do not think my any direct clash with the foreign culture is what I gained\nfrom my experience in Spain, but rather a more relaxed approach to life where \u201cwhat\nwill happen is meant to happen\u201d and to not stress over the little things. I\nbelieve I have found a mindset that can help protect me from the hustle and \u201coutward-facing\nvalue\u201d culture of the United States.\n\nI will return to Spain sometime in my life, whether to fully live there,\nvacation there, or just pass through. And I cannot wait to go back \u2013 because I\nmiss the food most of all.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just got back home after traveling to Oviedo, Asturias, Spain for the Fall 2022 semester. I loved every moment I spent in Spain: learning the language, the culture, and enjoying my first time in Europe by traveling to various countries. Overall, Europe is quite westernized, meaning there are not grand culture shocks when comparing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":746,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[369],"class_list":["post-21332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oviedo","tag-rollinsabroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/746"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21334,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21332\/revisions\/21334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}