Submitted by Alexander Heger on the 2016 winter session program in London, England sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice..
Our first long weekend ended yesterday, and while it’s good to be back in our cozy West End hotel, I am thankful to have had the last four days to travel independently. My destination of choice was Barcelona, Spain. I had been to Barcelona roughly four years ago for a short home-stay program, and this past weekend, I returned to catch up with my same host family. I was connected with this family through the Institute of Global Studies as a junior in high school, and I have kept in contact with them ever since through Facebook and WhatsApp.
When I touched down at Barcelona El Prat, I made it through customs in seconds and called my host brother to meet me at the terminal. From there, we went to his home, and I was reintroduced to a culture that I had fallen in love with four years before. The food, the language, the pride for being from Catalonia. What’s more is that I actually had the opportunity to meet with two friends from high school who were studying abroad, and my girlfriend who is part of the Winter 2016 Political Science program. It was a magnificent opportunity to reunite with old friends, to practice speaking a different language and to see parts of Barcelona that I had missed during my last visit.
On my last day there, my host brother took me to Montserrat, an old monastery built into a mountain which looks out over the city. In order to get there, we had to take a special kind of train, called a cremallera or zipper, which was able to ascend the mountain along a narrow railway. This was one of the many things I didn’t have time to see before, but that I had the opportunity to experience thanks to the Winter 2016 Criminal Justice program in London. As we climbed up even beyond the monastery, we were met with the most amazing views of a perfect day in Catalonia. Looking back on it now, I could not have asked for a better adventure.