The streets filled with hundreds of fans pounding homemade drums, bodies completely painted, waving flags, beers in hand, screaming uproariously. The SWAT team and police officers lined the streets watching the sea of people with resignation. As the roar of the crowd swelled, I could feel a “Roll Tide” forming in my own throat.

But this wasn’t an Alabama championship: this was an Atlético soccer game victory on a Wednesday night in Madrid, thousands of miles away from Tuscaloosa.

My time studying in Spain has been like that—an odd mix of can’t-put-my-finger-on-it familiarity and slap-me-in-the-face differences.

One second I’m realizing that life across the entire Atlantic Ocean isn’t that different. I’m with a group of Spaniards drinking a few beers on a Friday night in a plaza, laughing at the same old jokes, and I’m reminded of sitting out on the porch of a house party chatting with friends on a muggy Tuscaloosa night.

The next second I’m amazed by yet another cultural difference. I’m watching my Spanish friends fail their classes and laugh and say, “Well I didn’t go to class anyway, I’ll just try again next year, it’s no big deal,” and thinking of the articles I’ve written about stress, exams and the counseling center (not to mention my own mid-term and final exam panic attacks).

This was by far the most important thing I could have learned: we’re all just kids out there, trying to make our way in the world. It doesn’t matter where we come from or what we look like.

And at the same time you can’t forget that we were all taught different things. We all have different traditions and priorities and pasts.

I could see that part as I came to class 15 minutes late and still beat my professor by another 15 minutes. Or when I waited to meet some friends at 1 p.m. and they didn’t show up until 1:40 p.m., apologizing for being “a little bit late.” Or when I realized there wasn’t one clock on the entire campus of the university I’m visiting here.

I first noticed while trying to run errands around 2 or 3 p.m that every shop was closed for the siesta.

As different as Spain has seemed to me at times, it helped me reach another important conclusion about my own country and culture. I took an international journalism class this semester. I was the only American in the class of all Spaniards.

One of the first lectures of the class was about President Obama’s first year as president with a focus on health care. In a fit of patriotic passion, I prepared myself to defend my country and my president against whatever condescending things my professor had in store.

Yet I was completely and pleasantly surprised. My professor merely began explaining a few things so the students in the class would have a better understanding of the environment in which Obama was working.

I had never learned about my country through the eyes of a foreigner teaching from books not written or published in my country.

I realized we are a very different nation, with, for example, our focus on time and individualism, and we appear strange through the eyes of my peers.

Being here has invoked in me a sense of pride, of enlightenment and, at times, even of shame about where I come from. Still, I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.

I am still in Madrid and will be moving to Barcelona for the summer. I will head back to Tuscaloosa in August. I am so excited about coming back and finally being in the homeland after seven long months.

Karissa Bursch is a senior majoring in public relations and Spanish.