If you look up the definition of the word “home” in Webster’s New World Dictionary, you’ll find a good block of definitions. These definitions range from describing an actual house where a family lives to the country that a person is from, and, as I think about my experiences in the past year, I think I can probably find a place that fits each definition for me.

First, there’s my home in Edgewood, a town of about 900 people in the cornfields of northeast Iowa. It’s a nice town, lots of space, Friday night football games and catching up with people at the grocery store or after church.

Then there’s Iowa State University, where I go to school with 25,000 other students in the cornfields of central Iowa. My life is there most of the time; my friends, my classes and my jobs all revolve around the campus and occasionally down Lincoln Way or Duff Avenue. Lots of studying, working and running into friends on campus.

And now there’s Valladolid, Spain, where I go to class with 25 other ISU students. I speak in a language my parents don’t understand and go to bars without worrying about being carded. Lots of people, buildings and meeting friends in the Plaza Mayor to go shopping or out on Thursday night.

As you might expect, life is a little different here.

Now, I know that “A Day in the Life” articles can be kind of boring, but after hitting the delete button several times, I’ve decided it’s one of the best ways to explain how life here is different without becoming way too complicated. So here we go — I’ll try to keep you entertained.

Melissa, my roommate, and I both have class at 9 a.m. every day. While this may seem a little early for the average college student, it’s even earlier for a college student in Spain, and it means that one of us has to get up at 7:30 a.m. so that we can both have time to use the shower and eat breakfast. Showers are short here and a little colder than in the States since no one has very big water heaters and we don’t want to use up all of Blanca’s hot water before the day has even started.

Breakfast consists of toast, fruit and cafe con leche, one of the best things about Spain. I’ve been a coffee fan for a long time and cafe con leche, coffee with milk, has become my new favorite source of caffeine.

After breakfast, we head to school, which consists of several rooms rented out by the University of Valladolid in some office space. Most of our classes are pretty small, since there are only around 25 of us, but I think that everyone has a pretty good time in them.

A lot of this is probably due to our teachers, who aren’t much older than the students they’re teaching. For example, my grammar teacher Sergio is 24 years old. It definitely adds a new dimension to the class when your teacher has gone out dancing with you the night before.

My classes are over by 2 p.m., which is the beginning of the Spanish siesta hour and time for lunch. Siesta is one of the aspects of life in Spain that it took me a little while to adjust to. During the siesta hours, about 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., everything is closed except for a few restaurants and bars. Grocery stores, shops, even gas stations all go dark while their owners go home to eat lunch and take a nap. Very different from my life at school where I was happy if I had half an hour to eat lunch.

After siesta, my friends and I usually meet at the Plaza Mayor or the school to go shopping or walk around.

The Plaza Mayor is my favorite place in Valladolid because I think it’s one of the best examples of Spanish life.

Every town in Spain has a Plaza Mayor, and every day people go to the shops and bars surrounding it or take their children to chase the pigeons off its statues.

Watching the children run around the Plaza has become one of my favorite things to do, partly because they’re so beautiful and partly because I can understand most of what they’re saying. Mothers push their babies around in buggies and little girls run around in dresses and little hats with bows. Spanish children are always dressed to a T, no matter what day it is.

Most of the shops close around 8, and as I walk back to Blanca and Emilio’s apartment I pass by the neighborhood bars that are on every street of the city.

I’m not sure how they can all stay in business when there are so many of them, but every night they’re full as the local crowd gets together to watch the bullfight, have a drink and eat some tapas before they go home for supper.

Tapas are a special kind of Spanish snack food. They range from things like Spanish tortilla (eggs and potato omelets) to olives or tuna salad and are usually eaten between lunch and dinner, around 7 or 8 p.m.

Blanca usually has supper ready around 9:30 p.m., which gives Melissa and I just enough time to eat and get ready to go out. Going out in Valladolid always promises some sort of fun, even if it only involves someplace quiet and a glass of wine.

There are lots of bars to choose from, but there are two that have become my favorites.

The first is La Salamandra since it has free live music every Thursday and the second is a chupiteria near the Cathedral.

The chupiteria specializes in shots with names like Fried Egg and Blue Eyes among others.

Very good.

But Spanish bars aren’t the only places to find fun, especially when the discotecas are open by 1 or 2 a.m. These are especially fun since they play mostly Spanish music, and they’re one of the only places where we really see other people our age who aren’t from Iowa State.

And after I’m done dancing for the night and have had my fill of drinks, it’s time to head back to where I always end up whether I’m in Edgewood, Iowa State or Spain. Home.

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Andrea Hauser is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood and is currently studying abroad in Valladolid, Spain.