Big Hope 2: Keynote by Sir Chris Stone, CEO

Monday, June 18th, I was moved. I walked into the sports hall like any other day going to listen to another keynote. Well, this was not any other keynote. In the past we had some good speakers with good work positions and big titles. Their talks were not necessarily engaging, nor did they did interact much …

Big Hope 2: Liverpool, Day 2!

  Today was the second day of our trip at Liverpool Hope University for the Big Hope 2 Conference. The day started off pretty easily, with meeting new local students from the university, seeing children in their English school uniforms, and a beautiful walk across campus to our first Keynote speaker of the week.    The …

Virgin of Angels

Costa Rica is a little bit Catholic. About 76% of the population identifies as Catholic, though the percentage of practicing Catholics is slightly lower. Costa Ricans can also boast of belonging to the only state in the Americas with Roman Catholicism as the official state religion, ever since their 1949 constitution declared it so. And …

Weekend Travel: Switzerland and Black Forest

IES has been doing a good job keeping us busy. In the past 17 days, we’ve only had 1 day with nothing scheduled! Last weekend and the weekend before that, we’ve gone on day trips to Switzerland and the local Black Forest region. These trips have been great for seeing the area and getting to …

Visiting the Sahara*

Last weekend we all packed a bag, piled into the bus and drove 4.5 hours to the desert (plus a couple of pit stops for juice and a bathroom). At a gas station just on the edge of where the desert began we switched into four-wheeled vehicles and went off through the dunes, past some …

My Documentary: “Solitude: A Companion Abroad”

As mentioned in my first blog, I had been planning on filming a documentary for months and had many difficulties such as lack of money for equipment (tripod, camera and lenses) and losing my iPhone 7 that had taken the majority of my shots.  Despite these set backs, I was able to produce something that …

Are You Alive?

Hello Hope College y Queridos Lectores, Yes, I am alive. Sorry I haven’t gotten back to pretty much all of you, especially those close who have been awaiting updates from me. Undoubtedly, it has been a tumultuous and invigorating last 5 weeks since my arrival in late February. I arrived with doubts, fear, and much …

Soaking It In

As of today I only have 6 weeks left here. That’s a pretty crazy thing to think about. I’ve known that I wanted to study abroad since I was in high school and to think that’s it’s coming to a close very quickly, well that’s just a strange thought. This incredible, wild, eye opening experience …

Getting Involved

I’ve written a lot about my travels away from Salamanca on the weekends, but having a home base in this city is very important for my experience. We were told when we arrived that we have to be careful if we were planning on traveling every weekend because we are here to immerse ourselves specifically …

Portu(girl)

This past week was midterms week, and to boost our morale after a tough week we took a trip to Portugal with IES. On Friday we left early in the morning excited to get away from studying and for a sunny weekend in Portugal. Our first stop was the city of Coimbra, where we visited …