By bmnobles
I think that it's important to start off this post by first saying that I define community as being a group of people. I don't personally consider community for myself to be a specific place or thing, but more the people I choose to surround myself. In terms of GW Madrid, there are only twelve of us, so I have personal relationships with each person in my program. However, there are certain relationships here that touch my heart with more significance than others. Friendship for me is an extremely deep connection that I have with another person, and below are some photos of a few of my new, wonderful friends.
Above is the picture of my whole group that make up the GW Madrid group for Spring 2016. Being such a small group is both good a bad at times. We never had to worry about making friends or having a family-like community away from home. But being so small we easily get on each other's nerves.
This is a picture of myself and my friend Jessica. Jessica was initially the person that I assumed I was least likely to be friends with, but she has turned out to be one of my best friends.
This is Rory, as it turns out he only lives ten minutes away from me in Boston (where we're both from). He knows my best friend from home, and he is one of the sweetest, most precious people I have ever known.
This is Emma, she's the only sophomore on our whole trip, the rest of us are juniors. But despite being the youngest, Emma is the most adventurous and brings out the fun party girl person in all of us.
This is Emma, Max, and I walking down the street on our first day and Madrid. The two of them were the first people I was drawn to and became friends with. To this day I consider them both to be some of my closest friends, and I hope that they last for a lifetime.