Common App Essay Prompt#4, International Student
I would appreciate some kind of feedback from another person as I don't feel very confident about my essay. Please, feel free to ask for any doubts. Thanks in advance.
After a quick 30-minute car ride along the narrow roads that go through forests bordered by scattered ancient stone houses, there we were -just as many other Sunday afternoons- my brother, my parents and I, waiting for my paternal grandmother to open the gate of their rather uncommon alpine-style cottage, ready to spend a few hours with part of our family.
In northwestern Spain -where the rural flight intensified in the 1960s- it's common to visit one's close relatives (specially, one's grandparents) on Sundays. This encounter most frequently occurs at a pueblo, a small group of houses or hamlet which can date back to medieval times and where -usually- one's grandparents were born and raised. My paternal grandparents, willing to continue this tradition, decided to build a house not too far from my hometown nearly forty years ago due to the long distance there is between where we all live and their place of birth.
My grandparents' secondary house, surrounded by three more houses and lots of forests and fields, has always been, in the end, a place in which I felt a mixture of satisfaction and relaxation, of joy and peacefulness. Although I praise the urban lifestyle, there are definitely some advantages to visiting rural areas such as where my grandparents built their cottage. The cellular signal and the Internet connection are extremely limited at my grandparents' pueblo. Moreover, the total population of the hamlet is below ten inhabitants. Yet, I've never felt a sense of loneliness or isolation there.
Not only do I benefit from the lack of external distractions at the hamlet to do what I like the most (taking pictures of the forests that surround the cottage, going for a run, swimming during summer break at the swimming pool), but also to bond with my most loved ones. There is no better place to listen to my grandparents' memories about their childhoods and early lives than in front of the brick chimney in which my brother, my cousin Ana and I used to heat our feet and hands when we were younger, or for the three of us to have long chats about our academic, political and love concerns. Otherwise, the beep of one of our smartphones would potentially interrupt what I consider valuable experiences in the process of growing up.
Although it is nowadays when I most appreciate the Sunday afternoons with my family at my paternal grandparents' hamlet, it is great to remember my jolly childhood memories that have taken place there. Learning to swim without assistance at the swimming pool of the cottage, testing my first camera taking pictures of the rose bushes that my grandfather has grown since he retired and improving my running endurance out of the sports club have been some of the things that I have ended up loving that first happened there. Nonetheless, the personal enjoyment I have experienced has also come from being able to share with my relatives my childhood experiences. Furthermore, I assume that my family has been pleased to see the youngest generation (my brother, my cousin and I were all born within 15 months) grow up happily and together.
During the last two years of high school, I have been unable to visit my grandparents' pueblo as much as I would have liked to do so. Despite having lots of advantages, public high schools in Spain like the one I attend are pretty much just buildings in which you take exams. High schools fail to form a community and thus, keeping up with one's extracurricular activities is already a challenge.
That is why I now value the most my visits to my paternal grandparents' cottage. It has become a place of repose away from my nonetheless important academic activities, somewhere I can learn, share, remember and contemplate about what is yet to come. (640 words)
