Michael Howell: Blog Post #5

A Month full of Travels

April was an incredible month, where I got to see a lot of new places, and experience a lot of things I never have before. With our spring break giving me 11 days to travel freely, I had to make the most of it.

I spent the first weekend of April in the Azores, a chain of beautiful Portuguese volcanic islands. With a tropical climate, it was so cool to see the diversity throughout the island,from dramatic ocean side structures, to an almost rainforest like island center where cows roamed the surrounding areas.

The second weekend of April marked the start of Holy week, and our spring break. To start the break, we traveled to Andorra to snowboard. Growing up in Texas, snowboarding was foreign to me and this was the first time I’ve ever experienced snow like this. I was terrible at first and could hardly even stand up on the snowboard, but after a couple or several falls, I finally was getting the hang of it. I ended up loving this experience and can’t wait to find a mountain again back in the states.

Next, we took a 3 day cruise to Italy from Barcelona, which was super fun in itself. Being holy week in a jubilee year, Rome was extremely packed. However, the ancient city was truly remarkable and seeing the Colosseum along with other historical sights had always been on my bucket list. Being a Christian, it was extremely humbling being able to visit the Vatican City just days before the pope passed away.

After Rome and the Vatican, we headed down south to Napoles where I saw the ancient ruins of Pompeii, and did a boat tour of the Amalfi coast where I actually ran into another TCU student and his family who was studying abroad in Florence. The TCU family is everywhere! The Amalfi coast was so beautiful and also had always been a dream of mine to see.

After the break was over, we headed back to Madrid where we had a tour for one of our TCU classes. During this Supply Chain tour, we visited MercaMadrid, which is a huge compound here in Madrid. Large amount of produce, fish, and meats are transported from all over Spain to MercaMadrid where they are then distributed and sold to all of the stores and restaurants in the metroplex. It was so cool to be able to see the supply chain of a huge European city like Madrid and gave me just that much more insight into my host city.

The last weekend of April I was on the move again, this time to a beautiful party island in Spain, Ibiza. This trip was with all of the people I have met in Spain, with there being 15 of us from a variety of diVerent universities all staying together under one roof, which made me extremely grateful for the friends I’ve made abroad here in Madrid.

The month of April made me extremely grateful for all of the blessings I have received and all of the beautiful places I have been able to see during my time abroad, I will never forget this experience. Only one month left!

Hasta Luego,
Michael