Sara, a friend of mine is leaving for France in about a week (she's blogging it here), and that's got me thinking about my recent European excursion. All I can say is, it's strange to be home after a semester in Spain.
The historical buildings and squares everywhere are replaced by neat grids of streets. The jamon y tapas is replaced by burgers and corn nuts. Fine wine becomes grape juice. Rain becomes snow. Cold becomes...colder.
But I love it. Everything that I've grown used to feels new and fresh. The memories that float in my head of my months abroad feel like an extended lucid dream. I know I was there-I have the photos to prove everything. I just can't believe it all.
I stood at the rocky edge of the roaring ocean at Finisterra, walked through the Moroccan spice markets in the fragrant night and haggled for incense and scarves, stared at the Duomo's flying buttresses trying to figure out how they possibly were still standing in Milan, bought Spanish translations of Mark Twain, H.P. Lovecraft, and Saint-Exupéry from a burned-out hippy in Salamanca after catching a glimpse of the infamous frog, watched one of the larges political rallies on earth develop during the November strikes in Madrid, and dabbled my feet in the same water that carried Columbus' contemporaries across the ocean in Lisbon.
I wouldn't trade a moment of it. But I still love my home, the normality of it all. I love life just the way it is, really: unpredictable, spontaneous, and at times, frustrating. And I'll always be looking for new places to go.
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