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.