Puig Tarres: Gracias por todo, amigos mios

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Joan Puig Tarres, Inquisidor Gran

“Once a Spartan, always a Spartan.”

I have been thinking a lot about that sentence lately. Being a Spartan means a lot more than 7 letters. It means commitment, leadership, excellence, honor and more qualities that come afterward. Being able to represent the Spartan PRIDE for a year it’s been one of the greatest things I will do in my life.

The students, teachers, friends, and family that I met during this year have changed me forever. I met awesome people that helped me to grow as a person and that I will remember me for a long time.

This year has taught me lots of things, every day I learned at least a new thing, every day I lived new experiences, every day I enjoyed I was spending a whole year in the United States, and now that it’s coming into an end, I’m able to say that this it’s been the best year of my life.

I still remember the day my mom texted me saying I was going to live my exchange year in Wisconsin. It was a 25th of May at night after basketball practice. I was walking out the building, and when I saw the text, I started jumping screaming and laughing. My teammates had no idea what happened.

I had to Google search Oshkosh because I had no clue of where it was or if it was even a city. In fact, when I first searched “Oshkosh,” I thought I was going to a company named Oshkosh Corp, which at the time I didn’t know what it was. It was not after I googled “ City of Oshkosh, Wisconsin” that I realized where I was going, and I have to say, Oshkosh looks better in person than in the pictures.

After my arrival here on August 28, I was starting to get used to the new routines, schedules, and daily activities. After school started, I was amazed by how different everything was. Here in the U.S., the students are the ones that switch classrooms while in Spain the teachers do. I have to admit that it took me a couple of weeks to completely know where I was going, and it was not after a month into the school year that I realized that the first number of the classroom means the floor and not that we have more than 200 classrooms at the school.

Since the school year started, I have been involved in multiple activities. I worked at the school store for one semester, I was a cameraman and reporter for TV9, I wrote for the school’s newspaper The North Star, and I played soccer and basketball. All these experiences and the people that I met while I was enjoying them helped me to get through the best year of my life.

During this year I have done things that I never thought I would do, like going to a baseball game, going to an NBA game, going to prom, being able to graduate and even experience the coldest winter in my life.

Now that the year is coming into an end, I’m starting to realize that at some point I will have to go back to Spain. Unfortunately, that day is not that far away.

I want to thank everyone that has gone through this marvelous year with me: family, friends, teachers, and staff. Thank you for everything you have done for me during the year. Thank you for making me feel like I was home when I was far from it. Thanks for helping, caring, and living this experience with me.

Oshkosh North will always have a special place on my heart thanks to you all.

Hope to see you very soon!!

Sincerely,

Joan Puig Tarres