The European Studies Group will host a lecture on, "Writing the Early Modern Spanish Empire in the Pacific." Featuring guest speaker Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, the talk will explore the Spanish presence in the Philippines in the 16th and 17th centuries. This event is free and open to the public, and will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in 315 Phillips Hall.

The Fulbright Lunch & Learn series will continue with "A Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Ambassador: Fredrika Bremer’s Travels From the Stockholm Archipelago to the Caribbean." Featuring guest speaker Adriana Méndez Rodenas, a professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the UI, this event will take place on March 4 from 12:30-1:20 p.m. in 1117 UCC.

Study Abroad will host an information session on its popular summer Iowa Hispanic Institute program in Valladolid, Spain, on Wednesday, February 17, from 5-5:45 p.m. in 313 Phillips Hall.

Sarah Mayer, of Johnston, IA, has received a 2015-16 Fulbright U.S. Student Award to Colombia where she will work as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA). Mayer will graduate this spring with a B.A./B.S. in Spanish and biochemistry from the University of Iowa.

On "castle rock" in the Bay of Biscay, as I bit into a sort of hand-held omelet, I wondered: who invented this ingenious snack? I mean, who in history was the one to discover that you could even eat an egg, not to mention fry it with potatoes and onions into a graspable food item. The true genius of it struck me because Josu, my hiking companion, had prepared this himself and though I had eaten this same thing in nearly every restaurant in my neighborhood, there was something notable about this one.

The Latin American Studies Program (LASP) will conclude its two-part spring speaker series with a talk entitled, “Latinos, INC. in Social Media: Univisión and the Dynamics of Mass Connected Hispanic Media" by Sean Gelles of Univisión TV network.

Studying abroad in college was something I had always wanted to do since I was a very young age and last semester I finally got the opportunity to do so. I wanted to go to a country where I could utilize my Spanish but I did not want to go to Spain. So I spent my fall semester in Heredia, Costa Rica.

On my third day in Spain, I learned about the expert pickpockets of Madrid. It wasn’t simply through Ibon’s sound advice to get a money belt or to sling packs in front of our bodies where we could see them. No, I had to learn the hard way. I’m blaming it on the fact that I’m from a town where we don’t even lock our bikes. I implicitly trust everybody. However, belief rarely lines up with reality and in less than a week abroad I found myself wallet-free. Still, I’m optimistic that not every lesson that day was lost on me. Before I was so swiftly and silently robbed, I absorbed some stories about Spain’s long and complicated history, which, on more than one occasion, involved miracles.

Fewer students are enrolling in foreign-language university courses nationally, a study says, but the University of Iowa is not following the trend. According to a survey conducted by the Modern Language Association, there has been a 6 percent decrease in aggregate enrollments. At the UI, however, enrollment numbers have stayed consistent.

Study Abroad will host an information session on its popular summer Iowa Hispanic Institute program in Valladolid, Spain on Wednesday, February 18 from 4-5:00 p.m. in 1117 University Capitol Centre.

I have been in Spain for roughly two weeks and have spent 25% of that time lost. Maybe this is an exaggeration since many of my meanderings, as Tolkien might say, were spent with intention. However, this was definitely not true of my first day. My first experience of feeling misplaced was immediately upon arriving in Madrid. The second (third, fourth and fifth ad infinitim) have been in Bilbao, a clean and beautiful city whose streets seem to snake like tributaries of the Mississippi river even though I’ve been told by everyone who lives here “it’s so small it is impossible to get lost.” In every Spanish city I have visited so far I’ve found it very easy to lose my way, and the only difference between my first day and today is that now I do it on purpose.

My name is Hanley. I am currently studying the 2014-2015 academic year abroad in Madrid, Spain. I decided to study in Spain after having spent a year in Peru. I became fascinated with the Spanish language and the many cultures that surround it. My year in Spain has been one of the greatest experiences in my life, to say the least. Perhaps, one of the biggest revelations one could make while abroad is self-discovery. Regardless of people’s said intentions for going abroad, or even just travelling in general, they subconsciously are not only looking to see new parts of the world, but of themselves as well. People travel to find previously undiscovered parts of their identity.