The Ghosts of Junes Past

Sometimes, in order to see where we're going, it helps to see where we've been. At least, that's what I believe. In my daily handwritten journal, I quite often take a moment to look back and see what exactly I was doing on this day a year ago, to observe what I was thinking about, to read about my worries and laugh at how much things have changed. 

Although I'm not going to share any of those exact journal entries with the whole wide internet (far too embarrassing), I thought I'd take a moment today to take you on a trip down my memory lane to where I was on this date years and years ago. 

I first left home at the ripe old age of 18, so that's where we'll start. 

2007

In mid-June 2007, I had just finished high school and was taking a trip out to Maine for orientation at my new university. I was the perfect picture of teenage angst, having just broken up with my high school boyfriend and feeling like I would never love again. I couldn't wait to be an adult, to kick the dust of the Midwest off my feet, and start all over in a new exciting place, but I was still incredibly annoyed that my mom wanted to take pictures of me in Acadia National Park.

Struggles: Not having a summer job, missing my ex-boyfriend

Fears: That I wouldn't like my new roommate, that my new classes would be too difficult, that I would feel homesick in a new place all alone

Hopes for the next year: That Maine would fill all my lofty expectations, that I would find amazing new friends, that I would finally feel grown-up and independent when I left home

2008

By the time June 2008 had rolled around, I had settled quite nicely into life in Maine...so much so that I almost considered not coming home for the summer! I thought I had made those amazing lifelong friends I'd always dreamed about, my classes the previous year had gone well, and my homesickness had mostly dissipated after the first few months there. Going back to the Midwest for the summer was a slight culture shock, but I made up for it by exploring places in my hometown that I'd never been before, seeing everything with new eyes.

Struggles: Readjusting to a summer of Midwestern life after being away for a year, trying to become close again with my high school friends, starting to learn Spanish

Fears: That my Mainer boyfriend would find someone else while I was away, that my friends in Maine would forget about me over the summer

Hopes for the next year: That I would continue to grow closer to my friends in Maine, that I would find a cool yet cheap place to study abroad in

2009

Summer 2009 found me living in Spain for the first time, glad to escape Maine for awhile after a huge blowout between my boyfriend and my best friend there. After much deliberation, I'd chosen to study in Bilbao. This was because it was close to France, which I thought meant that they would be similar culturally. I was very, very wrong. I was trying to get better at Spanish but having a really hard time. I wasn't alone in my struggles, however, as I learned to do new (also super difficult) things like surfing with my fellow American study abroad students.

Struggles: Not being able to express myself in Spanish AT ALL and constantly mixing it up with French, not immediately loving Spain and regretting not studying abroad in France like I'd wanted to

Fears: That I'd made a mistake in coming to Spain and that studying abroad wouldn't be the experience of a lifetime like I'd always dreamed

Hopes for the next year: To become fluent in Spanish and travel all around Europe

2010

In June 2010, I had been back in the States a few months. Even though I had mixed feelings towards Spain at the end of my time studying there, once I was back in Maine I missed being in Europe and traveling so badly it hurt. I was spending the summer working a retail job that I hated, which really brought me down since I wanted something more for myself. There were only a few bright spots in that otherwise depressing summer, which were watching Spain win the World Cup and finally exploring Portland, Maine. I even went to a cool gay pride festival! 

Struggles: Feeling inadequate because I was the only person I knew who didn't have a cool summer job in their chosen field of study, missing Europe and my life there

Fears: That I wouldn't be able to find a professor to advise the thesis I wanted to write on the translation of poetry, that I would get stuck working retail forever, that the majors I had chosen would make me unemployable

Hopes for the next year: To find a graduate program that would lead me towards a job that I would find more fulfilling than working in sales

2011

In summer 2011, I had just defended my thesis, graduated from university, and left Maine for good. I had forgotten all about going to graduate school. In the end, my desire to go back to Spain won out, and I had been accepted as an auxiliar de conversación in A Cañiza, Galicia. So I went back to Illinois and spent the summer with my family and old friends, waiting to leave. That was a little dull at times, but I did take a couple of cool trips, like one to the rolling hills of West Virginia! There, my sister, her husband, my nephew and I went ziplining with Ace Adventure Resort, which was--in a word--awesome. I loved swinging through the trees like George of the Jungle!

Struggles: Being single again for the first time in nearly four years, leaving behind all my friends in Maine, trying to gather together ridiculous amounts of paperwork for a Spanish visa

Fears: That I would hate Spain again, that I had forgotten all my Spanish, that teaching would be a nightmare

Hopes for the next year: To travel a lot more around Europe, to finally have Spanish friends

2012

After my second year in Spain, by June 2012 I was feeling very comfortable there. I had no desire to go home for the summer when I had the legal right to stay, so I took a position as an au pair in a suburb of Madrid. Before I left Galicia everyone told me I was going to asar (fry) in the capital, but I had no idea how much! The heat was unbearable. That coupled with being stuck in the suburbs was a bit difficult, but I was able to spend some time exploring Madrid and learning more about day-to-day Spanish family life. My Spanish also improved quite a bit!

Struggles: Feeling lonely because I knew no one my own age in Las Rozas, getting broken up with in Spanish via text message, dealing with the summer heat of Madrid

Fears: That I would never make close Spanish friends in Vigo, that my living situation would be as miserable as the year before

Hopes for the next year: To join a weekly Couchsurfing meeting and make friends there, to live with Spaniards, to become more integrated at my work in A Cañiza

2013

The summer of 2013 found me leaving Spain again, this time with a very heavy heart. I didn't want to leave behind the amazing life that I'd built for myself in Vigo, with fun activities, great friends, and some incredible Spanish and German roommates. But I also realized that opportunities to realize your life goals (like living in France) don't come around every day. I knew that if I didn't go to France, I would always regret it. So I reluctantly said my goodbyes and faced my destiny. But before heading back to sweet home Chicago to get my French visa, I got to go on an awesome Eurotrip with my parents to gorgeous places like Lake Bled, Slovenia! That made the pain of leaving Spain lessen ever so slightly, and I was glad.

Struggles: Saying goodbye to my wonderful friends and life in my favorite city in Spain (Vigo), packing two years' worth of possessions into one suitcase

Fears: That I would hate living in France and regret leaving Galicia, that my French was awful and no one would understand me

Hopes for the next year: To become fluent in French and have a year in France that would fulfill the fantasies I'd been having since I was 14

2014

At this time last year, I was doing some final little trips around Brittany (like to Brest) before leaving France. I had incredibly mixed feelings about leaving, as I'd had a real rollercoaster of a year. I didn't feel quite finished with France. It seemed like there was still more to learn, and definitely room for improvement with my French. But at the same time, Spain (like the jealous ex-boyfriend it is) wouldn't let go of its firm grasp on my heart. So I was going to be heading back to the States soon, a pitstop on the way to my fourth year in Spain. I was starting to feel super nervous about being a graduate student and was a bit uncertain whether teaching was actually for me. I'd just finished a year working at a really difficult school, and wasn't sure whether my struggles were a reflection of my inadequacies as a teacher or just the result of a hard situation. 

Struggles: Feeling sad over a relationship that was about to end, already missing the friends I had just said goodbye to, getting tired of changing countries just as I was beginning to feel comfortable

Fears: That it would be really difficult to get a Master's degree, that everyone else would know more about teaching than me, that I would hate living in Madrid

Hopes for the next year: To feel integrated and fulfilled in my new teaching job, that my Master's classes would be interesting and informative, that a graduate degree would make me more employable

2015 (The Present Day)

So here we are in mid-June 2015. I'm spending my time saying goodbye to all my favorite people and places in and around Madrid, because as far as I'm aware, I'm leaving Spain for good this time. Of course, I thought that two years ago, and six years ago as well, so one never knows. But that's the plan. I'm working on finding a big-girl teaching job without the title of "assistant" attached to it, in a place I can legally live for more than one year at a time. I've just finished my very last Master's class and I'm getting ready to graduate next week. Then I'll be off on (perhaps my final) big European Vacation with my parents! Getting ready to (I think) end my years in Spain is a big step for me, but my heart isn't quite so heavy at the thought of leaving this time. It feels like the right decision in order to further my teaching career and accomplish my life goals, so I'm going more or less without regrets. 

Struggles: Trying to plan a big vacation while also doing 2-3 interviews a week, saying goodbye to all my beloved little students

Fears: That my Master's degree will be very difficult to validate in the USA, that I'll never find a job because of my lack of American teaching certificate, that I'll really miss living in Spain and struggle a lot with culture shock wherever I end up

Hopes for the next year: To have a more permanent job working with the age group I prefer in a place I could see myself living happily for several years, to feel more stable in life, love, friendship, and everything else

So what have we learned from this exercise?

One, I should be incredibly wary of romantic relationships in summer. I have literally never broken up with anyone significant at any other time of year. Weird, huh?

But more importantly, the real value of seeing the things that haunted me in Junes past is noticing how insignificant they seem now. We humans sometimes get lost in the all-consuming concerns of the present. We forget that our worries of today are our silly anecdotes of tomorrow. 

It's hard to remember that the things I'm so worried about now will eventually resolve themselves. It seems impossible to imagine a world in which I have other things to think about. But looking at my past problems and knowing that everything worked out just fine makes it easier to know that the fears gnawing at my soul today will seem funny on this date in one year, five years, ten years. 

Does that mean I can forget about them now? No, of course not.

But maybe it will help me to feel just a little bit less scared of the unknown. And every time I feel a little less worried and afraid, it makes it easier to move forward. 

In the end, that's my biggest hope for all future years: to know that qué será será and to learn to embrace that with open arms. 

Photo Post: Graduation Goggles about Alcalá de Henares

As my time here in Alcalá de Henares draws to a close, I realize that I'm starting to get a case of graduation goggles. As explained by Robin in How I Met Your Mother, graduation goggles are when you begin to feel nostalgic as something is ending, even if you didn't really enjoy it that much in the first place. There couldn't be a more fitting description to how I feel about Alcalá right now. As much as I have felt stuck here during the past year, I'm starting to notice the little things about this town that I'm going to miss. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm still incredibly excited to be getting out of here in less than 3(!) weeks. I can't wait to see my parents again and do some glorious traveling. 

But during the past few weeks, I've been walking around town saying to myself "Wow, that building where Christopher Columbus met King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella really is beautiful," or "I forgot how cool it is that I live in the town where both Cervantes and Catherine of Aragon were born!" 

So I've been taking pictures of these little things that I'm noticing all over again. I'm hoping to cement them in my memory so that I can think back fondly on my time in Alcalá, rather than remembering the bad moments. 

It may be quixotic of me to think so, but we will meet again one day, Don Quixote! 

(Forgive me, I just can't help myself from being punny)

Yes, this town is obsessed with Cervantes. I'd kind of forgotten how silly that seemed to me when I first arrived here!

A quick break in the beautiful university courtyard during a long Friday afternoon class. The fountains are soothing, and it's very easy to picture yourself being a student here hundreds of years ago. 

I'd also forgotten how impressive I initially found it that I'd be studying in the third-oldest university in Spain. But the buildings, once I stop to pay attention to them again, really are very impressive. I wish I'd been in this state of mind the day the King of Spain stopped by to give away the Cervantes prize...I might have actually made the effort to go down and check out the hubbub!

Here's the building where Catherine of Aragon was born, and where Columbus was given the money to go "discover" America. I like to think that both things were announced from this very balcony...because I have an incredibly active imagination. 

The other day I discovered a random little art gallery tucked away next to one of my favorite restaurants. I saw this piece through the doorway, and couldn't help but go in to see it a little closer.

I often joke about how I'm living in the desert. The heat these past few weeks has been...not so fun. But graduation goggles make me appreciate the pretty color of the dead grass, and the fact that I don't need to worry about bringing a just-in-case sweater with me, ever. 

Alcalá's town square, where I can go to listen to random salsa music on a Saturday night and where I run into my little students every day of the week. This is arguably the most beautiful and representative place in town, and probably what I'll remember most once I'm gone!

Usually, graduation goggles aren't really a fun thing, as they obscure your vision and make you think things that aren't true. But I've actually been kind of enjoying wearing them these last few weeks. I'm seeing Alcalá once again through the eyes of a visitor and appreciating it all the more. It's actually been kind of fun! Who knows what other tiny cool details I'll notice before I leave; I'm excited to find out!

Grateful

I've been in a little bit of a mopey mood recently. There isn't anything in particular that's wrong, but I've been stressed about the future, about money, and about where I want to work and settle down, among other things. I haven't been the most fun to talk to lately as I worried aloud about all these issues.

But just today, out of nowhere, a sense of peace descended upon me. I don't know exactly where it came from. Maybe it's just the knowledge that things have always worked out before, and they will again, even if it takes some time. I'm certainly glad to be feeling less negative.

This sudden calm has left me feeling an immense sense of gratitude. I have so many things to be excited about, both large and small!

The first big one is that just over a week ago, I turned in my Master's thesis. It felt so good to get that weight off my chest! I mean, I do like writing, but by the end I was just ready to turn it in and forget about it. Cheers to a huge accomplishment! Even the roses in Alcalá came out to celebrate my handing in my thesis.

Related to that is the fact that I'm going to graduate with a Master's degree from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in just over 3 weeks. I can't believe it! It's been a long road to get here. There have been some good moments, and I've met a few nice people, but overall I'm ready to move on from this. It's been a difficult year. So I'm excited to move onto the next chapter of my life.

Of course, my graduation will also mean finishing my contract at my current school. There have been lots of ups and downs there, but in the end all I can think about is how much I'm going to miss my little students. They've really burrowed their way into my heart!

But onward and upward, as I have so many exciting things coming up in the next few months! As soon as I finish studying and working, my parents are coming to visit for a celebratory trip around the Baltics. Seeing new places with my two favorite people in the whole world, what better?

It's been too long since I've actually been on a proper vacation, so I am super psyched for all the travels I have coming up in the next few months. I feel like I've been caged up all winter, and soon I'll be FREE! I have all sorts of new adventures in store for me. One really exciting one will be visiting my old roommate from when I was living in France last year. I can't wait to see her again!

And feeling grateful wouldn't be complete if I wasn't also taking note of the smaller good things in life. Just last weekend, I took myself on a little adventure when running. I decided to go on a new path and ended up visiting the old Roman village of Complutum. There's not a lot left to look at, but there's still something thrilling about the fact that I can randomly visit Roman ruins on my morning run.

One more little thing--as I write this very post, I'm sitting on my balcony having dinner and watching the sunset. The temperature is perfect, and I'm munching contentedly on olives and jamón. The people in the café below are chattering, and I'm listening to my 60s radio station on Spotify. I feel totally at peace with where I am right now. A perfect moment if I ever saw one!

Where Is Home?

I seem to have an innate inability to give a simple answer to a simple question.

What's your name? That depends on your native language, what country we are in, and the language we are currently speaking. Probably about half of my friends don't actually know my name, since I hate the way non-native English speakers mispronounce it. So I introduce myself in a more Spanish/French way, which is not my real name but sounds better to me than their butcherings. Bref, it's really /əlɪsə/. A homophone of Alyssa, not Elisa.

How many brothers and sisters do you have? How long have you got for me to explain it? It involves divorces and remarriages on both sides, and either way I answer it's confusing. In short, I grew up basically an only child, yet I still have a crapload of nephews and nieces.

Where are you from? Where are YOU from? My answer will depend greatly on that. Most times in my expat life, I say "near Chicago," but it's always really embarrassing when I meet another Illinoisian and they ask for more specifics. Ahem, how near is "near" to you?

And lately, I've been doing a lot of deep thinking about that last one. Not where am I from, but where is home? I have a hard time coming up with an answer, even a complicated one.

Is home the little town near Chicago where I was born and raised?

But I haven't lived there in 8 years. This past summer, I cleaned out and packed up the majority of my things from my childhood bedroom, knowing that I had officially moved on. My parents are going back to live where they consider home, up in Wisconsin. So although Northern Illinois is where I was raised, I'm not sure if it's home anymore.

Is home Alcalá de Henares, where I currently live?

As sad as it is, I've never felt particularly at home here in Alcalá. It's an all right town, I suppose, but I'm not very happy here. I don't feel very integrated into society, and I don't have a lot of friends. I'm not miserable, but I am rather bored. I'll be happy when my Master's degree is finished in a month and I can move on.

Is home Orono, Bilbao, Vigo, or Saint-Malo?

In the past 8 years, I've lived in 6 different cities. Just doing simple math, I think it becomes obvious that I haven't been able to stay in any of them very long. I've been a nomad for a long time, trying on different cities for size but moving on relatively quickly from all of them. There were things that I loved about all of these cities: Orono's student culture, Bilbao's alternative vibe, the friends I made in Vigo, the language I spoke in Saint-Malo. But were any of them home? I don't think I was able to stay long enough to find out.

I'm getting really tired of this itinerant life. I will always love traveling, but I'm not the type that can do it continually. My heart is bruised from being fractured into pieces every single time I move. I need a stable home to come back to at the end of a long journey. I want my comfy warm bed to fall into, my car in the driveway, and my long-term friends to meet for coffee the next day to share my stories with.

So right now, my task is to build that permanent home for myself. To find a place where I can stay legally and make it mine. The question is, where?

Back to Northern Illinois or some other part of the American Midwest, where my permanent ties still are? Where I speak the language and know the culture like the back of my hand? Where everything is easy? Where I've traveled more than anyone I know? Where I've felt like an alien when I've visited every summer for the past 8 years?

To some other part of the States? To explore something new and yet still be "at home"? To make a new part of the country my own? To still be at a great distance from my family, even after all these years of missing them?

To a new country? To learn a new language or dialect? To explore a new part of the world? To be in a place where I'm all alone, again? Where I still need a visa to stay? Where I'd have to learn a whole new set of cultural paradigms? Where I'm far from everyone I love?

These questions have been running continually through my head for months now, and I still have no clear answers. I've been trying to listen to what my soul is telling me, but it's coming through like garbled static on a badly tuned radio.

I heard a quote recently in one of my meditations that I really liked. It was from a man called Philip McKernan, and it went "In the absence of clarity, take action." He was saying that if you don't know what to do, just do something. Even if it turns out badly, at least then you'll know one more thing that isn't right for you!

So I guess that's the plan. I have no idea what's right or where my home should be. So until I do, I just have to take some action, any action, and hope for the best. I have one month left of living in Alcalá de Henares, and then...

Once more unto the breach!

My Lately

I've been super super superrrrrr busy lately. As usual, I guess, but I feel as though my free time has been down to almost zero, what with one thing and another. It's that time of year when everything is beginning to come to a head--my students are about to take their official English exams, my master's thesis is due in less than a month, I'm searching for jobs for next year and doing interviews, and the weather is starting to be nice and I just want to sit around outside!

April flowers bring May...I don't know what!

I also want to make some plans for the future, but that's very difficult to do when I have no idea what the future holds after I graduate and finish my current teaching contract at the end of June. Maybe I'll find another job soon, or maybe I'll have to keep looking for a while. I don't know how many times I've talked about how I'm tired of this uncertainty. I really want some more stability in my life, to not be constantly jumping from one job to another! Still working on making that a reality.

In the meantime, here are some things that have been running through my head and my life lately.

Recently, I've been...

Reading: De tempête et d'espoir: Saint-Malo by Marina Dédéyan, which is a novel in French about the town where I used to live in France and a girl living there in the 1700s. I got it from the English coordinator at the school I used to work at, and I've been trying to finish it since about September. It's really good, but reading in French is so haaard, waaah! It probably didn't help that I took a break to start also reading the After Cilmeri series, by Sarah Woodbury. This series is right up my alley, as it's about some contemporary Americans who time travel back to Wales in the 12th century and end up involved in local politics. I read 6 books in two weeks, I got so hooked!

Listening to: Kendji Girac's Andalouse, which, yes, is awfully mainstream for what my taste usually is, since the singer comes from basically the French equivalent of The Voice. But it's in French AND Spanish, and it just makes me wants to dance! Good danceable music is hard to come by, and I'm not too much of a snob to listen to anything that gets my toes tapping.

Worrying about: Where I will be living and working next year. Applying for jobs is incredibly stressful, and I will be relieved when I have this all figured out! Then I can start planning some more fun stuff in my future, like trips!

Writing: The final draft of my thesis. I just want to finish this and turn it in already. I'm so over dedicating my weekends to writing and editing this one paper!

Trying: To stop drinking coffee and to meditate before bed every night. I recently decided that I wanted to reduce my intake of milk and sugar, as well as caffeine, so during Lent I gave up "necessary" coffee (meaning I only drank it on the weekends, for pure enjoyment, rather than when I was tired during the work week). I noticed that I actually started to feel MORE alert after awhile of reducing my caffeine intake, and so I've developed the theory that caffeine depletes my energy supply even faster because it makes me super energetic for a short time, and then even more tired afterwards. I'm back to drinking coffee occasionally now, but toying with the idea of going back off it again. I've also started meditating before bed every night, which has multiple benefits, like making me think more positively, appreciate the small things around me, imagine a great future, and also relax and fall asleep more easily. The one small glitch with this is that sometimes I fall asleep before I finish the meditation, but at least I'm no longer laying awake at night worrying!

Watching: Not a whole lot besides rewatching How I Met Your Mother in French, but I'd like to get caught up in Mad Men so I can watch the rest of the final season as it airs!

Eating: Loads of fresh asparagus and strawberries. It's crazy to me that what I consider "early summer" (June) foods are already in season in Spain! Not complaining though, especially at low low Spanish prices!

Craving: A Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. This isn't even something that I eat that often when I'm home, but my GOD do I want one right now, probably simply because I can't. There are tons of types of other pizza, but nothing that compares to a good deep-dish.

Missing: My family. This is constant, of course, but I just saw some lovely pictures of their trip to Florida a few weeks ago, and I really wished I could have been there. And visiting my friend's family in Galicia made me think about how nice it is to see the people you love, and how it's been a really long time since I have!

Wishing: The (free) food at in the school's cafeteria were more varied. I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds me (literally, ha), but I do wish the menu in our school's lunchroom featured more than the same couple of meals repeated over and over ad infinitum.

Feeling: Mostly content, as I try to not get caught up in the little annoyances of life and try to just appreciate the ride.

Grateful: That I just had a visit from a dear friend from Germany. It had been over a year and a half since I'd seen her, and it was great to catch up. Plus we're both kind of in transitional phases of our lives right now, so it was nice to talk about that to someone who totally gets it!

Waiting for: My four-year-olds to finish recording their CDs of the songs we've been practicing all year, so I never have to hear those songs ever again! I'm pretty sure being made to listen to the same ten children's songs in bad English at least 3 times a week for 9 months constitutes psychological torture. They may be forever stuck in my head!

Excited about: The fact that there are only 10 weeks until graduation. Only two more master's classes, handing in our thesis, and that's all she wrote! I'm excited, and of course a bit nervous to see what's next and if I'll be able to apply everything I've learned in the real world.

Loving: My students. I've really loved getting to know them on an individual basis this year, since I've been able to spend so much more time with my classes than I ever had in any of my jobs in the past. I'm so proud of them every time I notice them making progress, and I love that feeling.

Notes like this don't hurt, either!

Wanting: Time to both speed up and slow down at the same time. I can't wait to be done, and yet afterwards there is a big question mark, and that's more than a little terrifying. I know things will work out as they always do, but sometimes I worry anyway.

Hoping: This transitional stage is one of the last major ones I have to go through in the next few years. All the stress is starting to give me wrinkles!

Planning: A trip to Catalunya in a few weeks for my first-ever blogging conference!


What's your lately like?

My Changing Feelings About Spain

I think my feelings about Spain have run the gamut. I've hated it, I've loved it, I've wanted to leave tomorrow and I've wanted to stay forever.

When I first got here, more than anything else I was bewildered. I had no idea what this strange country was that I knew basically nothing about, where I all of a sudden found myself living, out of the weirdness of circumstances. 

Over the course of that first year, I learned more and more about the country, and more than anything else, I compared it with America and found it lacking. The service was slow, the prices were high, and I hated jamón. I was often miserable, homesick and feeling trapped with the host family from hell, who screamed at each other in front of me and criticised my Spanish until I cried.

I was so happy to leave at the end of my two semesters in Bilbao, and having my flight cancelled due to inclement weather and being stuck in airport limbo in Madrid for four days was the cherry on the cake. When I arrived home, I was thrilled to no longer be stuck in Spain.

However, following that was one of the most stressful years of my life thus far, as I was tirelessly writing my thesis, working towards graduating from university, and slowly ending things with my (then) boyfriend of four years. And during all of that, I often found myself daydreaming of Spain.

I saw Spain as the solution to all my problems, the escape to which I could get away when I graduated. I yearned for another opportunity to do a year in Europe (which I'd been dreaming of since I was a preteen) the right way. I craved another chance to realize those childhood dreams, and so I decided to go back when I graduated.

The second year, I was still culture shocked by many of the same things as before, plus being thrown into teaching in the Spanish system with no training whatsoever. I debated for the first half of the year whether I would just go home like I wanted, or whether I would be optimistic and renew for another year and hope things would improve. In short, I was once again pretty unhappy, and felt like it was all Spain's fault.

But the last half of that second year and all of the third one, improve things did. Those were probably the happiest 18 months of my life so far. I felt settled in Vigo, I had stable friends that I cared about, I was speaking Spanish almost all the time, and I had plenty to keep me busy. I was learning to understand my work, I was earning plenty of money, and I was traveling somewhere new almost every weekend. I fell in love with Spain in that time, deeply and unexpectedly. By the end, I had even decided that I could see myself living in Spain forever. I laughed at those small things that had once annoyed me (like Spain's notorious inefficiency), and decided to see them as the price of admission for being in a country where people work to live, where relaxation and being social are celebrated parts of daily life, where wine comes with a tapa, and where I had come to feel at home.

At the end of the third year in Spain, I wanted to stay and keep living that happy stable life, but I also felt like if I didn't take the opportunity being offered to me to realize my preteen dream of living in France, I would forever regret it.

As is common, however, upon finally realizing my 13-year-old wish, I realized that it wasn't going to be all croissants in chic cafés, living the life of Amélie. France wasn't the same in reality as it had been in my dreams, and it took me a long time to adjust to the reality of the country. And during all of those first few difficult months, I clung to Spain like a security blanket. I talked of almost nothing else, to the extent that several people thought for awhile that I was actually Spanish. I fell even deeper in love with Spain, or my rose-colored memories of it, anyway.

I did eventually begin to assimilate to life in France, just in time to have to leave, but I had a plan: get back to Spain, through hell or high water. Spain was where I belonged, I figured, and things would work themselves out if I could make it back. So I accepted a spot in my current Master's program in Alcalá de Henares, and came back.

At first this year, I felt justified in my choice to move back to Spain, what I had been told was "the love of my life thus far." I was once again enjoying all those things that made living here worth it, like tapas and siestas. But as the year has gone on, my feelings have begun to evolve once again, towards negativity. Part of it is probably living in the province of Madrid, which I've never liked as well as Galicia, but I think there are two other factors that play a much larger role.

The first one is spending more time with other English speakers than I have since my study abroad days in Bilbao. This time around, it's not because I don't understand Spanish, but because we work together and we study together, and I haven't had a lot of free time to find quality Spanish friends in Madrid (other than an old Galician one who lives here now). Being around other Anglophones means having people to complain with about those little annoying parts of Spanish life. Every time we're given a random task to complete that seems utterly pointless and yet is required of us in order to stay legal here, every time something seems to have been organized bass ackwards, and every time we disagree with Spanish teaching methods, we have each other to turn to. That is wonderful, and it's a great stress reliever, but it's forcing those small annoyances to the forefront of my mind. Things that I learned to ignore during my 18 happy months in Galicia have begun to bother me again. I've remembered that there IS another way, one that makes logical sense and is efficient. This irritation is compounded by the fact that I'm so busy this year that I don't have the time to take advantage of the best parts of Spain--the food, the people, the sunshine, the cheap flights to interesting European destinations.

That brings me to the second factor in my current negative feelings toward Spain. This year, I'm working full-time as an assistant in a Spanish school. I'm there as much as the regular teachers are, and I share many of their responsibilities. But yes, I am STILL an assistant. This is the fourth year I've worked as an assistant, and some of the realities of the job are starting to make me crazy. I think to myself, if only I had my own classroom, if only I could run things the way I want to, if only I could plan my own classes. I could handle those realities when they came in exchange for a life full of free time, friends, and travel. But now? I work all the time, I get paid half of what a Spanish teacher does, and I have no life, no freedom to enjoy all those things I once loved about Spain. And that's fine for right now, but someday soon I'm going to want something more.

And the problem with Spain is, it can't offer me that. I can probably find a way to stay here indefinitely, yes. As an assistant. Moving regions every year or two. But can I ever have stability, a decent salary, and enjoyable working conditions? No, no and no.

Spain for me is starting to become like that boyfriend you have when you're young, who you love so much and you think you'll be with forever, until you realize he can't offer you any stability.

And so what happens? You break up. I'm starting to wonder if a breakup between me and Spain is in the near future. I've had so many ups and downs with Spain and still stuck with it that I really did think it was true love...but I'm starting to grow up now. I'm starting to want to put my things away and not have to worry about packing them into a suitcase again 9 months later, and that's how things will always be for me in Spain, I think.

My emotional journey with Spain isn't quite over yet, but this is the direction it's headed in for now, and although that makes me sort of nostalgic and sad for days gone by, I think it's what's right.

So I'm probably going to be in the market for a new country to fall in love with soon, and hopefully it will be THE ONE, and not just another ex-love writing sweet nothings in my passport. Any ideas?

Thesis, theses...

Am I the only person in the world who hates that the plural of thesis is theses? Sounds too much like a funny word...

Anyway!

I'm supposed to be writing my Master's thesis right now. Clearly, that's going really well, since you're currently reading these words on my blog post ABOUT my thesis which does not in any way help me get said thesis finished.

If you're curious why I might be writing a Master's thesis when you all just thought I was doing another year as an auxiliar de conversación in Spain, well, that's a story for a different day.

But struggling to write this thesis inevitably reminds me of another time and another thesis, when I was sitting angrily in front of my computer screen willing myself to just write actual words already. That was, of course, four years ago (has it really been that long??), when I was writing my undergraduate honors thesis.

At the time, I was struggling with the choice between taking a "year off" (ha) to teach abroad or going to graduate school for literary translation. Fittingly for the latter, my thesis was a translation of the poetry of one of my professors in Bilbao.

So day after day I would sit on the futon in my sad, tiny, freezing little all-brown student apartment, and try to get to work. I would tell myself, "Just translate one sentence. Just one. Go on, do it!"

The weather out my window quite often looked something like this (when people ask me what it was like to study in Maine, this is inevitably what comes to mind...this is also the type of scene that comes to mind when people try to complain about "cold weather" in Spain, and then I start to laugh). 

As the snow swirled outside for months on end and I drank a probably unhealthy number of cups of tea, little by little, poem by poem, snowday by snowday, I made progress on my thesis, until finally the day came when I defended it in front of 5 professors, who said I could go really far in the field of translation if I wanted, and I felt on top of the world.

Just a few days after that, I decided to take a position to teach English in A Cañiza, Spain.

Why do that if I could have been so great at translation and didn't want to be a teacher?

Well, the experience of writing that thesis had taught me that I had no desire to be self-employed and have to set my own deadlines. The idea of spending my future going through that struggle of self-revilement, procrastinating and feeling bad about it every single day, sounded like honest-to-god torture.

In the end, my "year off" to find myself turned into four, and find my profession I did. I ate my words about not wanting to be a teacher, since here I am, doing just that and loving this dynamic job that is different every day and does not require me to muster enormous amounts of self-discipline about writing long essays.

But as a cruel twist of fate, studying to become more qualified to teach leaves me right here right now, staring at my computer screen, fighting the exact same battle as four years ago. "Just write one sentence. Just one. Come on, do it!" Except now, I've been out of practice for four years, and my skills are a bit rusty. "Is that how you spell that word? Does that word even exist in English, or is it Spanglish? Does that sentence sound right? How do people say that in America? Is that British English or American?"

The battle to write just one sentence is up an even steeper hill than it was four years ago, and I am absolutely floundering. However, having done this once already, I do know that I can, and that helps immensely.

More importantly, it also reinforces my plan to continue in this profession and not switch over to higher education or back to translation! I can fight this battle from time to time, but I still say: every day, no frigging way. Give me teaching or give me death!