Author: Nonso Mogor

I just wrapped up my second week in Australia, and now that I have a daily routine, and feel more accustomed to life here, I’d like to share some observations and how things are going for me here so far. 

For starters, the area I’m in is not affected too much by the wildfires that are burning through the state of New South Wales. Occasionally the air is a bit hazy and there may be a faint smell of smoke, but it hasn’t gotten any worse than that, thankfully. I’m studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney which has an enrollment of over 59,000 people! Much greater than Hamilton’s. As such, the campus is quite large, but still nice looking with cool study spaces. There’s still a large portion of campus that I have yet to explore.

I live a 25 minute walk/5 minute bus ride from a nice, small beach called Coogee. My friends and I have gone there multiple times after class for a swim or to just enjoy the sunset and the climate. 

The teaching style here at UNSW is different than how it is at Hamilton, so it took some getting used to. For the most part courses are taught through lectures, tutorials, and labs, and this is my impression of it so far:

Lecture is where the professor just reads very quickly off the slides of a PowerPoint presentation and doesn’t take the time to explain things. I see lecture as where they tell you what you’re going to have to learn yourself because you’re not going to learn much from just the lecture.

Tutorial is where we go more in depth into the concepts and solve example problems, and is probably the only section where material actually gets taught. 

Labs are the equivalent of TA hours. You can go if you want some help, but otherwise, they’re optional. However, the TAs seem to only be able to help you when it comes to coding, and not so much when it comes to the concepts that are mentioned in lecture.

Although so many people attend this school, there is still seems to be a sense of community, not because everyone knows each other like at Hamilton, but because everyone is friendly to each other, which seems to be an aspect of Australian culture in general, which I love. In Australia people are generally very friendly, including to complete strangers. There have been multiple times where I’ve been walking down the street and made eye contact with someone and they smiled at me, and I love that. That’s something I really missed about the States and Hamilton since it hardly ever happened in Spain. There was even one day, my friends and I were walking home and a person driving by yelled “have a good day” from his car and I was so touched that someone would go out of their way to wish us a good day. During orientation, a staff member was telling us about Australian culture and one aspect of the culture really stood out to me, and I’m a huge fan of it. She mentioned that Australians do not like to brag about their accomplishments. Some professors won’t even introduce themselves as professor, they’ll just say their name. This is because Australians really value equality and bragging about yourself can come across as trying to seem better than others.

A while back, I realized that what makes a place nice to live in is not just the setting or the amenities, but also the people. And having experienced such friendliness from Australians, though I’ve only been here for two weeks, I can say that I can envision myself living here in the future.

I’ve been home for a few days now and I’d like to take some time to reflect on my semester in Spain.

HCAYS was an excellent program and I’m very glad I was able to participate in it. I made some new friends with students from the other schools and I got to know better students from Hamilton whom I didn’t know too well before. This semester was also a nice break from the  rigor of academics at Hamilton. Although you still needed to study just as hard as you normally would for exams at Hamilton if you wanted to get good grades, I hardly ever had the need to stay up studying past 3am like I often do at Hamilton, especially due to computer science projects.

Through various cultural activities and academic excursions to different regions of Spain such as Andalucia, Galicia, and Valencia, the program exposed us to the rich culture and gastronomy of Spain. I took the flamenco class this semester, which is a style of dance that originated in Andalucia, and I absolutely loved it, and when I went to a professional flamenco performance, I was blown away. Watching the pros dance with such passion, strength, and grace really impressed me and I made sure to take some mental notes on how I could improve my flamenco skills for the class. I loved that flamenco class so much that I’m thinking of maybe joining a dance group on campus senior year. 

I set out with the goal of being able to speak Spanish fluently, and although I still wouldn’t consider myself completely fluent as of yet, I’d say that I am super close and it’s very much within reach. While I was in Spain, I tried to immerse myself in the Spanish language as much as I could. I only intentionally listened to music in Spanish and I only watched shows and YouTube videos in Spanish (with the exception of videos related to comp sci because I needed to practice my coding skills). Living in a country where the target language is spoken is such a great benefit because you’re surrounded by people who speak it, and now that I’m back in the English speaking world, it’s going to be a bit harder to keep that up, but I’m going to continue to listen to Spanish and Latin music, watch videos in Spanish, and keep in touch with friends from HCAYS and talk to them in Spanish. 

Being in Spain and speaking only Spanish for this semester gave me the point of view of an immigrant who does not know the culture well nor speak the country’s language like a native. Although I didn’t face any serious hardships during my time in Spain, I have a better understanding of the difficulties that immigrants may face in America and I have a greater appreciation for the bravery that they needed to have in order to leave their home country to live in a foreign one.

To conclude the first half of my study abroad adventure, here are a couple pictures of stained glass windows I came across in Spain!

In this vlog, I take you guys along with me through my final days in Madrid.

One of the bonuses to studying abroad in Spain is that it’s quite easy to travel to other European countries. Last weekend, I traveled to Portugal with a friend. Here are some of the highlights of our trip.

This past weekend, HCAYS went on an academic excursion to Andalucía. Andalucía is located in the southern tip of Spain and it’s significantly different from other parts of Spain because there is a huge Arabic influence in the area, having been under Moorish rule from the 8th-15th centuries. Language, culture, and gastronomy were all different from those of the North and continue to be different ’til this day. Ever since I started listening to Spanish singer Rosalía, I’ve become a fan of flamenco, so it was cool to visit the region where the famous style of dance & music originated. The three cities we visited were Córdoba, Ronda, and Málaga and they each had something different to offer, but I think it’s safe to say that the one thing that they all had in common were beautiful views. 

Friday

In the morning, we took the AVE (Spain’s high speed rail service) from Madrid to Córdoba. It took a bit under 2 hours on the AVE, and for comparison, if you were to drive down there, the fastest route would take about 4 hours. 

After la Reconquista, the Moors were driven out from the Iberian peninsula if they did not convert to Christianity, and the Christian population re-took over the south of Spain. Because of this, there exists Mosques with Christian symbols and sanctuaries inside. In the Mosque shown below, an entire cathedral was later built onto the back end of a mosque.

These two photos belong to the same building.

Saturday

Today, we headed over to Ronda, which is a mountaintop city with the best views out of the three cities we visited in my opinion. We took a long walk through the historic city and saw the main monuments such as the Plaza of Bulls, the bridge that connects the two parts of the city, and Ancient Arab bathrooms. 

Puente Nuevo

The ancient Arab bathrooms were not only used as a place to cleanse yourself both physically and spiritually, but they were also a place of socialization…kind of like the bathrooms at Hamilton!

Sunday

We spent Sunday in Málaga, which is the birthplace of famous painter Pablo Picasso. In addition to visiting his museum, we visited a castle located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and an ancient Roman theatre.

View from the Castillo de Gibralfaro. If you look closely at the horizon, you can see the coast of northern Africa!

In addition to the art history class that I’m taking, we usually visit at least one museum on these academic excursions around Spain, so I am consuming, analyzing, and critiquing a lot of art this semester. I found many of Picasso’s works to be captivating, and I really like the cubism movement that he started because I think it’s genius that he thought to represent objects and people as a composition of shapes. On the other hand, he also has a large collection of abstract paintings, which to me looked like they were rushed and/or created by a child, and I feel like if that style of painting wasn’t unique to him, people wouldn’t find them at all special.

This cool hand/bird statue I found while walking through the streets of Málaga reminded me of how I used to draw turkeys as a kid.

Spain is a fine country, but just like with any other country, the customs differ from those of the United States. For this weeks blog, I wanted to mention a few of the greatest culture shocks that I’ve experienced from being in Spain so far. 

1. Dining Etiquette

In Spain, or at least in my homestay, there seems to be utensils for practically every kind of food. In my homestay, we have three different sizes/kinds of forks, spoons, and knives each. Each kind of utensil has its specific uses. For example, the knife that you use when you’re eating fish isn’t the same knife that you’d use for eating turkey. In addition, not as many foods that are eaten with your hands in the States are eaten with hands in Spain. After lunch one day, my host mom asked if we wanted fruit (fruit is often eaten as “dessert”). I asked for kiwi, and my host brother asked for a banana. As I was eating my kiwi with a spoon, which is the same as how I’d eat it in America, I look over to my brother, and see him eating a banana with a fork and knife! Everything from peeling the skin to eating the inside was done with a fork and knife. I was super shocked to see that. I never would’ve even imagined that there are people that eat bananas with a fork and knife. 

Perhaps the greatest shock related to this topic was the time at which people eat. On the day that I moved in to my homestay, we had lunch at 2:30pm and it ended around 3:30pm. Afterwards, I took a nap that lasted until around 7:30pm, then browsed the internet for a while until it was about 9:30pm. I thought that maybe my family ate dinner without me because I was asleep, or that we just weren’t eating dinner that night for some reason, so I went over to the bathroom to brush my teeth. 10 minutes later, my host mom calls me for dinner, and I was like “¿Qué?”. Then I recalled one of the conversations I had with my host mom earlier that day, and I realized that she did mention that we eat dinner around that time, but I just misheard her.  

2. La Siesta

Everyday, from about 2-5pm, most shops and businesses all across Spain shut down for the siesta. In fact, it’s not uncommon for businesses to stop their services 15 minutes before they’re actually scheduled to close. “Siesta” means nap in Spanish, but in this case, it’s referring to the hours from lunchtime until work starts up again. Some people do use the time after lunch to take a nap, others use it to spend time with friends and family. During the first week I was here, I would end up taking a siesta after lunch unwillingly because my family would give me so much to eat for lunch that I would just be so tired afterwards, but after communicating to them that the food that they give me is sometimes too much, I’m not too tired after lunch, and I mostly use the siesta to either do some work or browse the internet.  

3. Don’t Smile

For the most part, in Madrid, people don’t smile at strangers, and I learned this the hard way. I like to smile a lot, including at strangers, and having grown up in a friendly neighborhood and having attended Hamilton these past two years, it’s normal for me to smile at people I don’t know and have them smile back, but this culture doesn’t exist in Madrid and I often forget that. For the most part, people walk with their head straight, not minding anyone else, and if you happen to make eye-contact with someone while you’re walking down the street and you flash them a quick smile, they most likely won’t smile back. They’ll probably just go back to looking straight ahead, and if you smile at someone and they do smile back at you, they’re probably not a native because apparently smiling at a stranger here means you have certain intentions towards that person. This is definitely one of the things I miss the most about Hamilton – that even though you don’t know everyone, the community still feels like family because of how friendly everyone is towards each other, even people they don’t know. 

Check out what I was up to this past weekend!

This past week, HCAYS took a trip to Galicia. Galicia is an autonomous community located in the northwestern corner of Spain. The area was originally inhabited by the Celts hundreds of years ago and you can still see that influence on the culture and landscape of the area today. In that region, they speak a language called Gallego, not Spanish, although there are similarities between the two languages. Much of the architecture is made from stone, which was a main element that the Celts used to build when they inhabited the area. 

Because this trip was filled with so much, I wanted to highlight a few of the cool things we did every day.

Monday:

Our first day there, we walked the last stretch of the Camino de Santiago, which was originally a series of Christian pilgrimages that started in various parts of southeast Europe like Portugal, France, Spain, and ended in Galicia. Hundreds of thousands of people completed the trail last year and though the motivation for the majority of them is still spiritual, a number of them who do it for recreational and sporting reasons. Completing the Camino de Santiago is a very significant achievement and it means a lot to people. My host brother spent two weeks completing the trail from Madrid to Santiago and he said it was an amazing experience for him.

Tuesday:

We went to a wine factory today and learned about the process of how wine is made from start to finish in a town called Cambados. There are many precautions that are taken to make sure the grapes are nice and suitable to make wine out of them. For example, they plant a bush at the beginning of a vineyard, and they health of that bush is a strong indicator of the health of the grapes.

Wednesday:

We went to a different town in Galicia called Vigo. This city is right by the Atlantic ocean which makes fishing a hot commodity. In fact, Puerto de Vigo is the second largest fishing port in the world. We toured facilities where the fish get moved, sliced, and auctioned, and a cool thing that I learned is that hawks are used to ward off seagulls and other seaside birds from eating the fish. On another note, the hotel we stayed in was called the Parador de Baiona and it was literally a castle that overlooked the sea.

The hotel even had a statue of a knight in armor. Very reminiscent of Scooby Doo.

Thursday:

There are multiple small islands off the coast of Galicia. One group of those islands are called Islas Cíes. The island that we visited was a protected national park with multiple beaches and hiking trails. The island is a big attraction, but it only allows for 2000 people to visit per day and you have to book your trip very far out in advance. The island produces as little waste as it can, and there is nowhere to dispose of trash because anything you bring on to the island has to be taken away with you. Even the bathrooms didn’t have paper towels. The views were beautiful, but the water was far too cold to spend too much time swimming in it.

Though we were only there for a short time, I noticed a slight difference in lifestyle between Galician cities, such as Coruña, and Madrid. Madrid is a very relaxed city compared to most of the cities in the US such as Boston, New York, and Chicago, but Coruña is even more relaxed than Madrid. It felt like the kind of neighborhood where everyone knows each other and people are just taking life easy there, which I liked. I believe this is due to its smaller population and because its architecture doesn’t feel like that of a city at all. 

Not only was this a wonderful trip with very beautiful sights to see and savory food to eat, but the group as a whole got closer and I think it was a great segue to starting classes on Monday.

This is my first vlog in Madrid where I take you guys alongside my arrival and some of the things I experienced during my first week there.

Hope you enjoy!

Hello, there!

Welcome to Spained Glass Windows Are Aussome. Thank you for checking out my blog and I hope you enjoy the ride as we journey through Spain and Australia!

My plan for this blog is to make a post once a week, alternating between a written post and a vlog. The written posts are going to be in English while the vlogs are going to be in Spanish. 

First up, we have Spain. One of my major goals, if not my biggest goal, for studying abroad in Spain is to become fluent in Español. Before starting the program, everyone had to sign an oath stating that they’ll only speak in Spanish (except under very specific circumstances) for the duration of the program. I’m very much looking forward to only speaking in Spanish because it’s pretty much forcing us to practice our Spanish at all times and there’s no way that we won’t improve drastically after a semester of that.

To give you a brief history of my experience with Spanish, at the elementary school I attended, we were required to take Spanish from Kindergarten up util 6th grade. In 7th grade, we were given the option to either continue studying Spanish, or switch over to French, Mandarin, or Latin, and I, against my mom’s will, decided to switch to Latin because I believed that it would help me when it came to the vocab section of the SATs. Fortunately for me, the year I took the SAT was the year they changed its format and got rid of the vocab section, so I ended up spending six years studying Latin for no good reason. What interested me about knowing languages was the ability to communicate with more people, and that’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do with Latin, so in 11th grade, I decided to take up Spanish again. I forgot practically all the elementary school Spanish I learned except for standard greetings and how to count to 20, but I relearned all of that and more within just a month of the intro Spanish course I took in 11th grade. 

This is all to say, pardon me if there are frequent pauses to think, improper grammar, and misuses of words during my vlogs. Hopefully, the number of those occurrences decrease as the semester goes on. 

I used to be upset with myself for switching over to Latin because I felt like I would be much more fluent by now had I never stopped taking Spanish, but after thinking about it a bit more, I realized that if I didn’t take that four-year hiatus, I most probably wouldn’t have become so impassioned to learn Spanish again. 

I am very excited for the Madrid program to start and I look forward to sharing more of my experience with you.