Hello! Thank you for visiting my little slice of the internet.

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My name is Ellie Maxwell (Elizabeth for long, @ Nick from New Girl). I am most recently from Colorado, but I was born in Chicago and have since lived in Fort Worth, Texas, Philadelphia, a small town in central Illinois, and Oklahoma, too. I'm also a 2022 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where I lived in Breen-Phillips Hall (go Babes) and studied business analytics and Spanish. I always loved teaching and language study while growing up, and I began regularly teaching English as a New Language (ENL/ESL) classes to adults during my sophomore year (shoutout to La Casa de Amistad. Check them out if you're at Notre Dame). I also dove into tutoring and mentoring during my four years in college. All of this, plus the fact that my spring 2021 study abroad program to Toledo, Spain was canceled, meant that applying for a Fulbright grant to assistant-teach English in Spain was a no-brainer. But it was definitely just a dream (one that involved a whole lot of planning and work).

Somehow, that dream turned into my reality.

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So, cue this blog, begun a few months later (one long-distance move later) in which I report to you live from Spain! 

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I decided to keep a blog throughout my year teaching and living here because I found that past Fulbrighters' blogs were some of the most helpful resources for me to prepare for and conceptualize the year ahead. Whether you're considering moving abroad to teach English, applying to the Fulbright program or, even better, recently heard news that you've received a grant (congrats!...also, please reach out), I’m thrilled that you’ve discovered With Love from Logroño, and I hope it proves helpful to you on your journey. 

 

So, what will you find here? My wish is that this blog functions less as a travel log and more as a memoir of sorts: reflective-type posts containing musings, observations, pieces of advice I've collected, thoughts on struggles, and major highlight moments. The travel discoveries are sometimes interwoven through these stories. One of my goals for the year was to deep dive into two areas: food + faith, hence why the blog's sub-section "Alimentos para el alma" (food for the soul) houses my side project: 10 themed posts exploring the intersection of those avenues.

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Why? I don't profess to know everything about Spain, but I do understand that it is culturally and historically both a pervasively Catholic and superbly gastronomic country. Hence, when not teaching, I explored as many historic cathedrals, churches, and chapels as possible in my region and anywhere I traveled in Spain + probed into the connection between each place's local foods and the closeness of a community, its expression of faith life, etc. That's a mouthful, but in essence it meant many wonderful meals, long conversations, and friendships made. 

Follow me as I learned a whole lot and explore just a few of the mouthwatering & soul-satisfying wonders of this world.

Hopefully, you’ll feel inspired to do the same.

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With love,

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