La Despedida

As I write this I am sitting at home, in Roseburg, still completely unsure if the last four months of my life actually happened or if it was all a dream. I don't know, when you come home you expect some sort of grand welcome and you expect the world to have stopped or changed drastically. Honestly everything just feels the same.

My last two weeks in Spain passed by in a series of lasts: My last trip up the hill to the Alhambra, my last time running along the river, my last sunny afternoon spent in Garcia Lorca Park, my last night hanging out with my Spanish friends and dancing at Camborio, the last tapa, the last churros con chocolate, the last lunch with my host family...

When you study abroad no one really warns you how darn hard it is to come home. I mean, you look forward to seeing family and friends but it's not the same. Granada became home and I have so many friends and great people and places I left behind. I really do want to see them again in Granada but no matter how much I promise it's always really difficult to know if you ever will really go back. And if you do, will it be the same? Foreign study is like taking a slice of your life and physically moving it and putting it in a different location. So, it makes sense that when you return, you do leave a little bit of yourself behind. I just didn't expect the tears or the profound sadness that would come along with leaving.

Now that I am home, I am happy to be here and looking forward to Christmas and going back to Willamette. But I also am scared I will lose what I learned from Granada. Of course, I am referring to my Spanish but also to the way of life I lived for the past several months. The "no pasa nada" mentality of not taking anything too seriously and of not getting stressed out is something I definitely want to take back with me. But I guess the most important lesson I learned from my time in Granada is to value connections with people above all and to remember that regardless of cultural differences, people are people everywhere.

So if I could sum up the experience in a sentence? The most exhilarating and dynamic period of my life in which I have no regrets and only great memories. Now time to bring a bit of Spain back to the US.