James Cockrell- Blog Abroad

Blog #1

Granada Spain: Week One

November 2025

The first week in Spain was hard. We flew eight hours from Atlanta with no sleep. Madrid was hot and white under the sun. The airport was loud and full of people. The language rolled fast and smooth, but I couldn’t catch any of it. Leah and I paced around the terminal, exhausted. We were about to lose 200$ if we missed the train. The signs would contradict each other.

Getting to southern Spain was agonizing. Bus after bus, Train after train. I couldn’t stop thinking of that one South Park episode where the characters die and go to hell. But in their depiction, Hell wasn’t fire or demons. It was a plane. A plane with all you can eat microwaved pasta seasoned with microplastics.

Granada was the first breath. We settled in with a nice dinner. The streets were narrow and cobbled. A voice sang in the distance, with a mix of Spanish and Italian. Leah was quiet, soaking in the noise, the buildings, the sky. Everything was new for her. She’s from a small town in Northern New Mexico so the craziest thing she’s ever seen were the Colorado Mountains. Watching her see the world was its own kind of experience.

We found a plaza. People sat outside with their wine and tapas. Everything seemed to be moving slow. Even the pigeons flapped in slow motion. We sat at a table that smelled of bread and wine. We waited for our first Spanish meal. The waiter took her time. Longer than any kind of service we received in America. No one checked their watches. It was like Spain never invented clocks and were never on deadline. We were used to fast hands and fast feet, the kind of service that made you feel like you owned the place. Here, we were just foreigners learning how to wait. I laughed at this realization. Normally, the rich get this kind of culture shock. Not us.

Orientations began. We met other students in our program. Most came from the East Coast such as Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, D.C. The way East Coasters interact with each other is oddly different from the West Coast. The seriousness felt different. Leah and I were the only ones from New Mexico. There were all sorts of students from different backgrounds. Others from Japan, China, Korea, Canada, Australia, Morocco. My world expanded outside of just Spain. I made a few friends. One of them, Wesley, stood out. He’s from Atlanta, goes to Georgia Tech. He’s studying for the GMAT and wants to be a doctor. He laughs loud and talks fast. His mind never sat still. We met on a hike that our program invited us to.

The climb was steep and hot but talking and getting to know the other students made it much easier. The sun wouldn’t leave us alone, even at the top. The Alhambra stood at the top of this hill, the statues lined the path. Meanings as old as seven hundred years ago. Thick walls of battlements and teeth crowned at the top displayed its power all over Granada. The walls were filled with islamic patterns. Built by the Moors. Palaces, gardens, water channels running through the courtyards. Overflowing with the sound of tourists and cameras. The professor told us the stories of Alhambra in Spanish. Describing the traditional islamic architecture and methods that soldiers would perform just to defend the walls. Well, that's at least what Wesley told me. That’s when it hit me. I couldn’t keep up. I wanted to learn about the castle, the churches, the stones under our feet, but the words were moving way too fast. The words were blurry. There weren’t any captions that could assist me. My Spanish wasn't good enough. It felt like running into a wall. That was the wake-up call. I thought I had come to Spain to explore, to soak things in. But now I saw the truth. This wasn’t just a trip. It was a challenge. One I’d have to meet head on if I genuinely wanted to grow.

Blog #2

Granada, Spain: Week 2

November 2025

Classes start at 8:30 AM and run straight through to 12:30 PM. They were long hours. Our brains operate as fast as it can to try to understand what the professor was saying. The rooms were already warm when we sat down. The heat in Spain would not concede. The air-conditioning was desperately trying to fight it off. Electricity costs money that the school did not have so it was rationed like water in a dry country. I slept better now. My schedule was finally adapting. Less food, more walking. The Spanish made my brain stall easily. I noticed myself losing weight fast.

At 12:30 I walk over to Leah’s class to pick her up. She studies her Spanish after class. I study my personal hobbies, like cybersecurity. Our friends came with us sometimes. Jhes is a good friend we met from New York, Ecuadorian and fluent. Leah has been learning a lot from her. The whole reason we had come was for language. Especially for Leah. She looked at it like a climber, finding the weak points, discovering paths to climb.

My progress is smaller but there. I could produce simple conversation. Ordering food. Quizlet lessons at night under my blanket right before I went to bed. Vocabulary was my weakest. Same with grammar, but the only way to produce sentences is with stones. I pushed myself into small talks with shopkeepers. That's the easiest way to get out of my comfort zone. One man I met was named Ahmed, from Pakistan. Nine years in Spain had made him strong in Spanish and developing his own Shawarma Kebab shop. We spoke of the hard parts of learning a new language. Getting used to the dialect was a big obstacle for him as well.

Another was Lukas, a quiet man from China. He worked in a small shop near our apartment. We spoke only in Spanish because that's all we shared. Every morning, he watches me walk to the same fridge. I would lift out the same liter of gluten free chocolate milk. By the end of the week he smiled before I reached the counter and told me that I was drinking all of his stock.

One of the health advisors, Kat, told me my ears would adjust as time went on with classes. That the professor would sound less like waves and more like people speaking. She was right. The first few days I was able to get by. I would look around me, see what the other class students were doing, and copy what they were doing. Then by day 3, I was finally beginning to understand more and more of what was going on. I still struggled throughout the rest of the week but I was noticing some good progress.

The school system was one hard pill to swallow culturally here. They post grades publicly, without shame. Your failures on display for everyone to see. They placed me in Level 2 and Leah in Level 5. At the end of the month, there will be an exam that decides whether you're able to move on or be left behind in your academic progress. It was a cold way of measuring people. It was an adjustment. It's a system that's built on just progress, not encouragement. Time began to speed up once I understood that. The days no longer felt soft. Less forgiving.

The professor came late sometimes. Even the professors smelled of wine and cheese some mornings. What would be strange in America was ordinary here. It was honest, at least. It wasn’t a shameful act to most. It was simply how things were.

Spain grew on me. The pace. Carelessness. The heat but decent weather during the winter. The blinds that hung outside of buildings. Simple metal shields that kept the sun from boiling the rooms inside. In New Mexico, we never thought of such a thing. We fight the heat from the wrong side of the glass.    I kept comparing Spain to home. The People lived differently. Freer in some ways. More burdened in others. It made me think about America. About the freedom meant and what it didn’t.

My Spanish improved, though I still missed half of what was said. Two weeks in Spain had taught me how little I knew, politically, socially and linguistically.