Spider Summer Series: Natalia Chaney
06/08/2015 | Women's Lacrosse
This is the next in our Summer Spider Series detailing some of our Spiders' summer adventures. Follow these posts to learn more about a few Spiders and what they have been up to this summer!
Summer Spider Series: Rising junior Natalia Chaney is with a group of Spider students spending a little over a month in Spain. She details their adventures in this first installment to start the summer of 2015.
NC: This summer I am studying abroad in Seville, Spain for five weeks with other student-athletes 
from the University of Richmond. It is such a great opportunity and life-changing experience. I am living with a host family and another teammate, Leslie Espenschied. My host family is a sweet, elderly couple that does not speak not a word of English. Therefore, communicating with them has been difficult. Most of the time we both just laugh because we don't understand each other. However, our host mom, Clotilde, is an amazing cook, so at least she always understands when I say “Me gusta!” (This means, I like!)
My first weekend here we took a class trip to the beach at Cadiz. It was a beautiful beach and it was nice to relax before we started class that Monday. I am enrolled in an intensive, four-hour Spanish class that I attend everyday. During the first week of class, we had a field trip to the Cathedral of Seville, which is the largest in the world! The second weekend a few of us decided to take a trip to Madrid. As soon as we arrived, we went to Santiago Bernabéu Stadium to buy tickets for the Real Madrid soccer game that night. Later that day, we went to see el Palacio Real de Madrid (the royal palace of Madrid), and the Temple of Isis. Both were amazing sites to see. The Temple of Isis had real hieroglyphics from centuries ago.
The next day, we went to Plaza Mayor, which is one of the most common tourist destinations in Madrid. We also went to el Parque de Retiro where we saw the Chrystal Palace and I rowed us around in a rowboat that we rented for an hour. My class took another field trip during the week to Real Alcázar de Sevilla, which is one of the oldest royal palaces still in use in Europe. This past weekend, my whole class and I decided to take a day trip on Sunday to a beach in Portugal. The beach was below a cliff and the water was a magnificent blue. I am looking forward to this 
upcoming weekend because many of us are going to Barcelona.
My time here has been really eye-opening and has taught me so much already. I have learned the value of experiencing different cultures and how to appreciate differences. Being here has also made me appreciate the smaller things in life. The language barrier has been especially challenging, but now I have gained insight about how hard it must be for non-English speaking people who come to the United States. I look forward to seeing what my last three weeks here will bring.
