An end and a beginning.

As life progresses, the seasons turn, sometimes at irregular intervals, sometimes overnight and sometimes a gradual, graceful change. I feel the seasons shifting in my own life as my two years of la vida española are over. When I think of these years I will think of golden slanting sunshine, the smell of the salty sea air mixed with the wafting of freshly fried fish, bright white Andalucían pueblos with tidy trim in the clearest cerulean imaginable. I’ll think longingly of three day weekends and late night tapas runs, which always seem to end with a visit in the wee hours to the Argentinian guy that sells handmade empanadas in the square. We’d stand in the street taking enthusiastic bites of piping hot caprese empanadas, washed down with Argentinian beer and exhilaration. The frustrations, the thousand tiny cracks of discomfort will fade away in memory to insignificance, like a new mother forgets labor pains in the blinding joy of the moments after birth. This is how it should be.

This past season has been like one long summer, filled with good fun and swimsuits and the kind of friends that you bond with hard and fast, like you’re at summer camp. We’ve been living carefree, like seagulls wheeling freely in the breeze. But all good things must come to an end, and as with actual summer, somehow we are usually inexplicably ready for autumn. It feels like that now in my own life: changes, sharpening of pencils, a more serious, homey season is in store.

When we were accepted into Harvard Law School, The Mister and I looked at each other in awe, blinking, our minds flipping through the million ways in which our lives are about to change. At the moment, I feel ready for them. The past season has been deliciously irresponsible, but sometimes after a nice long rest we wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle something grand, to use our muscles, to sweat a little bit. I don’t doubt that this next season will be exhausting at times and I’ll think longingly back to Málaga and my favorite park bench angled perfectly beneath the jasmine flowers. But that’s why we carry these summer memories with us into winter, because it will be long and sometimes hard. The promise of a well-lived life is that someday there will be another summer, of a different flavor, but nonetheless another season of reckless abandon. 

Until then, hasta luego. It's been wonderful.

America.

Ah yes, America. It still is as big and sassy as ever, with an added dash of spicy summer heat. 

We've been back for a week now and it's going to take a while to fully reorient ourselves. Things that have seemed strange include:

• Almond butter, peanut butter, cashew butter, sunflower butter and on and on
• How efficient the security line at the airport is - everyone seems to know the drill. No mass confusion: what? I have to take my shoes off? Both of them?
• Everything really is huge, you guys. Houses. Wide avenues. Elevators. Bathrooms. Sodas. Dogs. Cars. People (you knew I had to say it).
• Dollar bills are really terribly designed currency once you think about it. All the same color and size regardless of denomination? Confusing. And so long and skinny.
• Dr. Pepper and bagels and 100% beef burgers with cheddar cheese.
• Technology. Man it has been racing along. All these apps and mobile bar codes and cool gadgetry.
• Flavors that have been largely absent from our lives: beer with lime, buffalo wing sauce, chipotle peppers.
• All the English. I can't tune out a background conversation with the same ease. 
• Everyone keeps trying to eat lunch at 12, or worse, 11:30. I still think of it as breakfast.
• American flags are everywhere. 

Do you know how great it is though to be able to have a phone and talk and text with friends and family? After two years of email-based communications, it still feels pretty novel to get an instantaneous response. 

Spain is lovely, and it's hard not to fall in love. But I was out in the car yesterday and saw a huge American flag rippling across the wide, blue desert sky - the widest and bluest sky in the world - and I though that yes, yes indeed, I am glad to be back.

Hasta luego, España

Tomorrow morning we'll be getting on the plane and leaving this lovely place.  I'm sad that the adventure is over but I'm also already excited about the next one. Also, I'm excited to sink my teeth into a Chipotle burrito. And to not have to wake up every morning and check the paper to make sure the currency in my wallet is still worth something.

I'll miss the fruit market, and fresh persimmons, and paella and Manchego cheese. I'll miss Claire and my friends, my students at school and their grubby adoring little hugs. I'll miss the beach being outside my front door, and I'll miss the nighttime walks along the waves with The Mister. I'll miss the everlasting sunny weather and siesta and the way the shops are closed on Sundays.

But after all the adventures over the last two years, after Italy and Jordan and France and Scotland and Ireland and Morocco and Portugal and Sweden and all the rest, I have come to this timeless conclusion:

There's no place like home.

A note on the future of this blog

Looking ahead. Or behind, depending on how you look at it. I'm a glass half-full kind of girl so I say ahead.

I debated back and forth for awhile. What to do with this blog? What do you do with a travel blog about living in Spain when you no longer live in Spain?

So here's what I've decided: I'm not going anywhere. Internetly, at least. I'm going to keep blogging  throughout the summer, as I navigate what is sure to be a fun (funny?) transition back to the motherland. 

I've never heard the overplayed radio hits, I've been told that there's something/someone (still fuzzy on that?) called "The Situation" that is somehow culturally important, and when I left America the word Siri didn't mean anything. My sisters told me that I am like their little alien that has to be taught how to be around normal people again. They said my de-Euro-ization will take at least six months (maybe longer in the fashion department?), but in the meantime they're willing to be patient.

At some point in the summer, I'll begin blogging on my new blog, which is in the final stages of my super-secret design and testing process (read: I've barely started throwing around ideas).   I'll leave this blog and URL unchanged so that anyone who likes can access posts about Spain and travel without having to sort through layers of stuff about life in Boston and Harvard. But I hope you come along for the ride over on that blog too, because even if law school is completely outside your area of interests, I bet there will be some incidents involving Boston baked beans or New England leaves in the fall or über-special people straight out of The Paper Chase (true or false? everyone at Harvard Law is a pretentious overprivileged trust-funder? tune in to find out...). 

In other words, I do not think it will be  boring. 

Is it ever?

Thoughts on leaving Spain: Going out on top

Leaving Spain is such a strange sensation. It isn't like a normal moving day, where you know you can come back and visit on occasion. I hope to come back one day of course, but it won't happen for a long, long time, and quite possibly not ever. These friendships will be stretched and wrung out under the strains of time and distance and cultural divergences and an ever-widening language barrier as my Spanish, inevitably, slowly leaks out of my brain. I will do everything I can to bridge these gaps, but I am not superhuman and the task will be impossible forever.

Part of me, I'll be honest, longs to go. I am American, and I hear the call of home. I'm yearning for absolute fluency in communication and cultural matters, Thai food, the sounds of an ice cream truck, salsa, buffalo wings, texts from my sisters, cultural cues to help me remember holidays, homes of family members in which to celebrate them in. I miss football (the real kind), Thanksgiving, cornbread, flavored coffee creamers, handshakes instead of cheek kisses, Fahrenheit. I miss fitting in and I miss modern small comforts – dishwashers, dryers, central heating and AC, carpeted floors. I miss being able to pick up the phone and call my mom without first subtracting nine hours to figure out if she's awake yet.

But oh, how I will smile when I look back on this season in Spain, and how nostalgic I will be for it after it ends. I know I sometimes talk about Spain on this blog as if it is all a never ending string of sunny days, good food and funny cultural experiences, but the truth is that for us, it really has been such a happy time and those will be my memories.

I know, though, that prolonging our time here for another year would rub off some of the magic. Things that seemed charming to us two years ago ("they never seem to be in a hurry! they really know how to enjoy life!") have slowly and perhaps inevitably morphed into frustration ("I have been waiting for twenty minutes for the check because the waitress is at the next table finishing her coffee. Just because she isn't in a hurry doesn't mean none of us can be in a hurry.)

My sister Emily asked me recently how I felt about leaving and I told her I didn't know exactly, that I felt a blend of excitement and happiness and nostalgia and loss. "Well," she told me, "it sounds like you're leaving at exactly the right time then. Not too soon and not too late."

And you know, I am pretty sure she was right.

Goodbye, English teaching

And just like that, it's over.

Today was my last day as an English teacher. The kids group-hugged me to death and drew me lots of pictures with hearts and I mostly wandered around with a plastered-on smile, ambivalent and a little stunned. No matter how much you know it's coming, ending an era of life is always a bit of a shock. In just a few weeks (three to be exact) I'll board a flight and go back to America, and a few more weeks after that I'll move to Boston to begin law school. Then, on some cold, rainy, blue-toned day in Massachusetts I'll lay down across my bed and lift my face up toward the dark sky and I'll dream of sunshiny Spain. 

Teaching English hasn't been a picnic by any stretch, but I've liked it for the most part. I've worked in three elementary schools over the past two years, and each one had their merits and drawbacks. The kids are cute, but they are also loud and whiny and inattentive, and did I mention loud? Very, very loud. Some days my job was fun because I got to engage with students on interesting topics and watch them actively learning. Most days it was frustrating and a bit boring, because I am not always in charge of the classroom and I'm subject to another teacher's whims and teaching/discipline style. Cultural differences are more alive and well in the classroom than you can imagine, and sometimes I still find myself absolutely baffled by the Spanish system and why things are done a certain way. No doubt, if they came to America they'd think the same thing.

But my teaching days are over and now I can live my life without the constant need to pick apart my language and examine it like a dissected frog. Now I'm free to admit that I have no idea why we say in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening and at night. I don't know why read (present) and read (past) are spelled the same way but pronounced and understood differently. I can't explain why the expression "catch up" has nothing to do with either catching or up. I love words, and language, and now I'm free to dive back into the art of it and let go of the science and tedious mechanics.

 I'll miss the coworkers and some of the kids, the nice ones who are smart and funny and work hard. I won't miss all the behavior issues and the millions of requests to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. I won't miss sassy nine-year-olds or kids that just refuse to work but then complain to their parents that it's too hard. 

Overall, I'm so glad I've had this opportunity. I am 100% sure that I am not cut out for a permanent position in elementary education, but hey, that's what law school is for.

Today is the day we move to Spain

And we're off!

See you on the flip side!

Simultaneously an end and a beginning

Tonight is my last night in the States for awhile.  It feels quiet, like the hush before dawn, and a little bit sad.

Sad, because of all the goodbyes recently, the tight hugs and the tears and the achy feeling when you walk in the other direction.  I'll miss my family the most because they are in my bones and a part of me in a way that calls me home.  But I'm grateful to realize just how many friends in Phoenix have wormed their way into our hearts, and from whom it's particularly grieving to part.  I'll miss them greatly.

Then there are the frivolous things that become less frivolous when you're away.  I'll miss the marriage of popcorn and movie theaters, peanut butter and jelly, sour cream and salsa, flag-shaped cakes and the 4th of July.  I'll miss the freedom of driving, and I'll miss the easy flow of English and the inside jokes of friends who have known you a while.

Tomorrow is a day for new beginnings, and the morning brings with it a trip to the airport and a flight that will carry us to a new era of life.

Tomorrow will be exciting, and there is so much to look forward to in our new Spanish life.  But tonight I get to look back.  And I have to say - United States of America and all that is within, I will miss you.

Turning in the keys

Today is official move-out day!  From here we will spend a few days at my parents, a few days out east with family, and then - España one week from today!

All said and done,  we got our whole life down to three big suitcases, two small ones, and a few boxes.  That may sound like fun, but I assure you it was not. (Kidding. It doesn't even sound fun, does it?)

But - almost there!

Yard Sale

This weekend our friends Fred and Andrea were having a yard sale.  We had heaps of things intended for the donation pile, so the timing worked out perfectly for us to stop by for a few hours and try one last time to see if anyone else actually wanted to give us money for any of our stuff.

As always with yard sales, it somehow worked!

Favorite item that someone actually bought: A five-gallon bottle of Windex (thanks Costco) that was only about a quarter depleted after I've owned it for three years. (I hope for their sake that they have an entire house of glass.)

Favorite item that nobody bought:  Andrea's  yellow bowl that looked just like sunshine.  I loved it, and would have taken it home in a heartbeat if I had a functioning kitchen, apartment or pantry. Which I don't.

Best dressed:  Andrea, who wore her signature heels...at 7 in the morning...at a yard sale.  We've been friends for three years and I have never, ever, even once, seen her without heels.  She's classy, folks.

Best thing about yard sales: getting to eat an unhealthy breakfast as congratulations to yourself for waking up well before 7 on a Saturday.


Worst thing about yard sales: Mentally comparing how much you are selling your stuff for with how much you originally paid for it. Wondering how much money you have spent wasted in your life on material objects dumb crap that you didn't really need.

Oh, and I got to see this sky.




Also - this weekend a photograph of my trip to the Middle East was featured at the Matador Network, a website for travelers.  I'm still blushing a little bit.  Check it out.

Packing removes all the personality from a space - or does it?

  

Before

Packing things in preparation for a long-term move is a strange thing. While theoretically I know that my car, my apartment, my desk at work are all identical twins of a thousand other copies, sentimentally they feel unique and MINE.

You know that old musing "If only these walls could talk..."?  I've been wondering lately what mine would say.  Even if the furniture was cleared out (it is) and the pictures and curtains unhung from the walls (they are), I wonder how much of a person's intangibles remain.

I'm not getting all new-agey on you here, it isn't that I think that something actually happens, but sometimes you walk into a house and you just know that the people there are unhappy or depressed or lonely or joyful or happy.

You just know it.

I think my apartment walls would say "Sarah you really need to work on your laundry skills, because we notice that you never seem to take that last load of laundry out of the washer and you are always having to re-run the cycle because it gets mildewy.  Seriously, all the time.  Set a text message reminder or something, okay?"

I think my car walls would say "Stop being a cheapskate and get me in a GARAGE, for heaven's sake. STAT!"

And my cube walls: "Let's drink coffee."

What would yours say?

After

Yin and Yang

What I will not miss:

paper pushing

What I will miss:

tortillas