This week was the fastest week of my life. I blinked and it was Thursday, and I was already preparing for a weekend in the Canary Islands. This week, it felt like I spent a lot of time on planning and logistics. We booked everything for the Canary Islands a couple of weeks ago, so this week I went through and decided to hash out the travel times and a more detailed, hour-by-hour itinerary for the weekend. This was when I realized all the tours I booked for us were an hour by bus from the hostel we booked. Things like that remind me how many details there are to pay attention to and have helped me realize to factor these things in more meticulously. It is much different traveling in another country where I am not in control of travel times. Buses run late, taxis get lost, and Ubers don’t exist in the Canary Islands. These are all things that I need to do a better job of thinking about ahead of time, since it is very different than only factoring traffic at home. We ended up having not only long travel times to all of our planned activities, but we also had some issues with our flight. We booked the wrong flight back to Madrid originally and had to book a new one same day. Then, later on, our flight was delayed 2.5 hours! I arrived at my host family’s house at 4:30 am. Despite all of this, I managed to stay positive and keep in good spirits. There is no point in sitting in an airport, miserable so the only thing for us to do was to make the most out of it. We managed to make the most out of our long travel and wait times with card games and dilusional jokes.
This weekend taught me a lot about how a good mindset can turn around a crappy situation. It also taught me the importance of planning every detail to the exact!
We flew into Gran Canaria on Saturday morning and headed straight to the Maspalomas area to explore the sand dunes in the area. We hiked some trails through the dunes and got to see some camels. The camels were a part of a small farm that looked like someone owned on some of the dunes. After our hike, we headed to the more town part of Maspalomas. This was a forty-minute walk and allowed us to see so much of the town and the area we were in. We got a quick lunch and then headed back to the coast to go on our Maspalomas tour. Our tour was a hike through some of the most iconic sights in Masapalomas. We got to see more dunes, famous monuments, and gorgeous overlooks of cliffs and mountains. After that, we checked into our hostel and had an early dinner. We were so exhausted after our long day, we went to bed so early so that we were able to wake up the next morning.
This was one of the streets in Las Palmas. I love the different colored buildings!
On Sunday, we woke up at 7 am and slowly got a move on our day. After a little bit of flight drama, we started to make our way back to the Maspalomas area. We met up with our tour guide in a parking lot that overlooked the ocean. Everything about it was beautiful. Our guides took us on a 4-hour hike along the coast. The cool thing about this hike is that everything was in Spanish, and we understood! We also got to swim in the ocean a little bit to help cool off. After that, we went straight to the airport and kept our spirits high for the rest of our time in Gran Canaria.
The water was so blue and pretty!
This week’s topic is leadership and how my experiences abroad have shaped my leadership abilities. Before studying abroad, I had always considered myself a strong leader. I have found myself in various leadership positions in jobs and school projects. I believe my internship hasn’t presented me with a lot of ways to show leadership, as I am doing a lot of busy work and doing a lot to just keep up with daily tasks and conversation. I do, however, feel like watching my boss and seeing the way he leads has shown me a lot about what kind of leader I want to be. He is extremely level-headed and wants to see everyone on his team succeed. I appreciate that he takes the time to explain what he does and why he does it, and encourages me to ask questions to make the most of my experience.I think the things that I see in him and the habits that I have observed will help me improve my own leadership skills back in the United States.
For this upcoming week, I still have one more trip to finish planning, and I will be triple-checking all destinations and times!