Una adventura esta terminando, pero otra va a empezar pronto

I’ve gone to Madrid on Sunday’s pretty regularly throughout the semester but today I thought I better stay in, study and make any final revisions to my papers.  I’m thinking about how I’m going to make one last trip out there this week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday once I’m completely done with school.  I keep thinking how it will be my last time going, how I should have gone to Madrid more.  Then I think about how going into Madrid from Mostoles is just like going into Chicago from Aurora or Geneva.  It takes about the same amount of time, it’s a similar distance, and the respective places are a similar size.  So why beat myself up over not going to Madrid as much when I make it to Chicago maybe once or twice a year?  I’ve read this in studies I’ve done about foreign exchange students for my honors project, being away makes you realize the adventures you could be having so much closer to home.  It’s one of those you don’t realize what you have until its gone moments.  This trip has made me want to see more of the U.S., especially made me want to go into Chicago more, even just for the day.  Being in the suburbs I’ve heard and made the same excuses, Chicago is about an hour train ride, things there are more expensive, you have to walk around all day because you don’t have a car.  Well I gladly dealt with those exact same things here to go to Madrid so why wouldn’t I do them at home?  It’s a safety net, it’s what we’re used to.  We’ve seen Chicago a dozen times and know it will be there the next time we can make time to go.  But we, and I don’t know why I say we, I’m really only talking about myself but I’m sure people can relate, need to treat home with just as much of an adventure as this last semester has been.  I need to treat home like I treat my experience here, like I might not get another chance to go to Madrid or I might not get another chance to go to Chicago.  It’s funny I tell people I meet here about all of the trips around Spain I’ve taken and I’ve seen more of Spain than some of them have.  It is the same anywhere you go, you don’t treat your home like someplace new and exciting but we should.

 

I am absolutely ready to come home and just relax for a while, embrace my comfort zone since I’ve been so far out of it for months, but then I want to see more of the U.S., I want to go into the city for the day and just enjoy what I have at an arm’s reach.  In the movies they always say the cliché lines like you don’t realize what you have until you don’t have it anymore but it really is true.  Almost everyone I have talked to extensively here would love to come see the U.S., they would love to see New York, San Francisco, Washington, ect. And I have the opportunity to do that much easier than they do and I haven’t taken advantage of it.  I don’t need to leave the country to have a travel adventure.  So my goal for this year, I guess you could call it a new year’s resolution, is to see at least one place in the U.S. that I’ve never seen.  But this coming week I’m going to make sure I visit Madrid, downtown Mostoles, and anywhere else I can fit in because this adventure is almost up, but I’m going to find another one close to home before I know it!

Voy a echar de menos…

Things I’m not going miss about Spain:
-Being a minority/outsider, mainly being stared at or excluded from the conversation because people assume (and are sometimes but not always right) I can’t keep up
-Most of the food – including non-refrigerated milk, nasty mustard, and having either fish or ham in practically every dish
-The kitchen and bathroom in my apartment, within the kitchen and bathroom things I specifically won’t miss are:
     o The washing machine, the sink, the stove, and the oven
     o Sharing space aka having people move or eat my stuff (and the overall awkwardness that I feel with my roommates)
     o Washing dishes by hand, and the lack of scrubbing my roommates do on their dishes
     o The shower head and how gross the shower always feels
-Carrying bags of groceries from the close store (about 10 minute walk) or from the far store (a 5 minute walk, then a 10 minute train ride, then another 10 minute walk)
-Converting from Euro to Dollar in my head, and the high price of everything here
-Having to wait a day for my clothes to be dry
-Riding the tiny elevator with strangers from my building
-The desks at school and how big the classes are
-Missing things in class and having to constantly ask my teachers to clarify what they said
-How everyone talks over each other, it’s completely normal for two people to just both talk at each other, loudly
-Having a 7 hour time difference and talking to my friends and family via skype, also relying on facebook updates to keep in touch with people/news
-The pay per minute phone plans
-The type of brick used in the sidewalk, makes wheeling anything a big pain

Things I will absolutely miss about Spain
-Lessons with Vanesa (which will continue via skype but the live version will still be missed)
-Getting to speak Spanish so often
-My teacher Marta
-Taking the Metro
-Tortillas
-The egg rolls
-El Rastro
-My room, especially my bed with the nice headboard/shelf, and my blanket if I can’t fit it in my suitcase
-Cien Montaditos
-Chocolate and Churros
-My almost daily hot chocolate at school
-The fact that most drinks get served in a wine glass, even soda
-The dish drying shelf in the cabinet above the sink
-The starchy feeling of my clothes after drying on the rack
-Riding the tiny elevator
-The drinks – Tinto de Verano, Havana Rum, and Cava
-The candy and ice cream selection – Nestle needs to share the wealth, they have lots of stuff here that they apparently don’t want to share with the U.S.
-The abundance of sidewalks, even on busy roads that would never have a sidewalk in the US
-The crosswalk guy (the walk/don’t walk sign but it has a little guy that walks and runs)
-Cheap rent, even after the conversion, with utilities included

I’m sure there are things that are missing from each list but those are the things that stand out in my mind.