This year has gone by incredibly fast and I have made a point to try to live in the present and fully appreciate this amazing opportunity... but with less than one month left before I leave Spain and go back to the "real world" as some people say, it´s hard not to think about the past months I´ve spent here and the future months ahead.
Looking back I am really proud of myself for getting situated in a place that I had never been to before and is not very "me." I am happy I got to go to Morocco, a part of the world I had never seen before, and back to Madrid, the city I can navigate with my eyes closed and is the reason I am here today. I found 10 English-hungry learners to spend hours tutoring every week, and several Spanish friends to practice my subjunctive tense with. I became obsessed with spinning, the activity that from a far always seemed boring, and even further annoyed by Spanish pop music, a genre of sounds that will forever torture my ears.
And looking ahead... well, I don´t want to ruin the present...so all I´ll say is, I´m not too worried.
I graduated from Vanderbilt. I can't believe a full year has gone by! Even though it's scary to think about how fast time goes by, I feel very happy with the decisions I've made this past year and what I've done with my time, and that is such a satisfying feeling. Go me!
This year has gone by incredibly fast and I have made a point to try to live in the present and fully appreciate this amazing opportunity... but with less than one month left before I leave Spain and go back to the "real world" as some people say, it´s hard not to think about the past months I´ve spent here and the future months ahead.
Spain is technically on CET (Central European Time), but I think it is worthy of having its own time zone. In Spain, when someone tells you to meet them at a cafe at 4pm, they really mean they plan on showing up closer to 4:45pm. I was warned about "Spain time" in a culture class during orientation, but nothing compares to first hand experience. Take today for instance, a teacher showed up to class not "on time." Meanwhile, I had arrived at exactly 11am and felt awkward just sitting there while the class turned into a zoo so I rallied everyone together to sing, "If you´re happy and you know it clap your hands" until there was NO WAY I was happy anymore. For an extremely anal New Yorker this has been... a challenge. It is my natural inclination to be "on time" because...well that is what I have done my entire life and I, as well as the person I am meeting most likely has overbooked their day and cannot afford to spare an extra minute. Given all of this, it is definitely a refreshing experience to have a lifestyle where I don´t feel the pressure to squeeze 36hrs of studying, errands, meetings and sleep into 24. Due to this I believe people here are significantly happier and healthier than they are in the United States, (or definitely at least in New York.) The long lunches, siestas, and lack of pressure to be out for the night before 10pm is something I would love to bring back to New York, but sometimes I wonder how things actually get done around here!
