Stateside

The roommate and I -one of our last nights in Salamanca

Well, I’m stateside again. My last few weeks in Spain were wonderful. I loved Salamanca and I made so many good friends. As a result, it was super easy to leave. NOT. My roommate left a day before me, so I had the last evening to spend packing by myself in my big, empty room. Dark times. Then at 1:30AM Saturday morning, most of the ISA kids got on a bus to Madrid. We had to leave that early because one person in our group had a flight at 6AM, so we all had to go super early, even though some people didn’t fly out until late that evening. Luckily my flight was at 11AM, so I only had a few hours to kill in the airport. After a few dream-like hours of listening to music and dozing in my little spot on the floor against the wall surrounded by all my luggage (the Madrid airport doesn’t have chairs until you get to the gates, once you’ve gone through security. It’s really quite poorly planned, because there are people sitting all over the floor everywhere and everyone who is walking or running through the airport to get to their check-in counter trips over sleeping travelers sprawled out across the floor), I got on a plane to Washington Dulles Airport. So that was a 9 hour flight, then I had a 4-ish hour flight to Phoenix, and then a 1.5 hour flight to Reno. Everything went surprisingly smoothly. I hadn’t slept the night before because we left at 1:30AM, but I had planned to stay up anyways so it would be easier to adjust back to Reno time once I got back. So as a result I was really tired the whole day of traveling and slept a little on each flight, which made everything go by much quicker. So when I finally got home at 8ish Reno time, I had dinner and hung out with my family a bit before going to bed at a regular time. Jet lag averted, boom. It was kind of rough to travel backwards in time though. I would leave at 11, and end up in the next city still in the afternoon, and by the time I got to the next city only an hour or two had passed by the time I adjusted to the new city’s time, so it was like the never-ending day. But I did it, and I woke up the next morning totally rested and fine. Jet lag is for weaklings. Just kidding, I probably just got lucky but I'm going to pretend I avoided jet lag due to my skillful planning and superhuman strength.

Airport reunion with my brother. Presh.

Alright, so maybe I'm having some trouble unpacking. But that's only because
unpacking means it's really over :(

So I’m home, that’s that. I don’t know if I’d go and label myself as someone experiencing ‘reverse culture shock’- if you’ve read my blog since the beginning you know my thoughts on culture shock. Some things about being home were a little weird to me at first, but nothing major. I must say that I LOVE being able to make my own food, and I like to be back on the American schedule of eating, lunch at 12 or 1, dinner at 6 instead of lunch at 2:30 or 3 and dinner at 9 or 9:30.

Ohhhhh yeeeaaahhhh. Making my own lunch - a toasted whole wheat pita with marinara sauce,
grilled chicken, bell peppers and onion, a sprinkle of cheese and some basil. It was a DELIGHT.

Sorry Spainiards, but you do NOT know how to make sandwiches. This is where it's at.

 I’m also happy to see my family of course, I missed them more than I had realized. There are a few things that are a bit weird to me that I’ve noticed; I’ll make you a tiny little list:

• Driving. I haven’t driven yet because my license expired while I was gone and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it yet, but I’ve been in the car with other people and I freaked out a little. It just seemed like everyone was going ridiculously fast and driving ridiculously close, and the cars were so much bigger than I’m used to. I was kind of a wreck the first few times I was in a car here.
• Not walking everywhere. It’s strange to me now how spread out everything is. I’d like to keep walking everywhere, but it’s kind of impractical now because everything is so far away.
• Lights and water. I’m still used to using the smallest amount of water possible, and turning off the lights when I’m not in the room even for a minute. It’s not that my family wastes energy, but compared to what I got used to living in a homestay, it’s a little strange to me how much water and energy we use here daily.
• Babies. This one is a little dumb, but whatever. I love babies and kids, and I noticed in Spain that if I would smile or wave at a little baby in a stroller or being carried by its mother, the mother would give me kind of a glare and walk a little faster. I don’t know why that is. But when I got off my plane in Reno and was walking towards baggage claim, a mother was walking in front of me carrying an adorable little baby, so the baby was facing me, and he was smiling and giggling at me as I made faces and waved at him. The mom turned around and smiled at me, and I told her how cute her baby was, and she thanked me and smiled instead of shielding her baby like I was about to steal it.
• Stores. I went to Target for a few things when I got home, and I was a little overwhelmed with all the choices. There’s just such a huge selection of things to buy, and it’s just not like that in Europe.
• Money. I gave a cashier a euro coin by accident the first time I paid for something. :)

That’s about it. Like I said, nothing major. Just little things that remind me that I’m not in Europe anymore. They’re such minor things that my time in Europe seems kind of like a dream, because I fell back into step with the pace of life here so easily. I guess that means I need to make another trip there soon to remind me of how it is…

So although I'm happy to see my family and some of the everyday conveniences are nice to have again, I miss almost everything about Spain. I ESPECIALLY miss the language. I’m afraid I’m going to lose the language abilities I acquired abroad because I hardly use my Spanish when I’m at home. Although, the second night I was at home my dad got a business call from a guy who didn’t speak English and he handed me the phone – I didn’t really have time to be nervous, I just said ‘hola’ and went from there. And, surprise, it went really well. I understood him just fine, and I was able to reply and tell him what he needed to know. I think I may have confused him a bit with my Spain-isms though. For example, like a good Spaniard, I used vale every other word to get my point across, which is definitely a Spain thing. But I got the message across and everything went fine, so I felt good about the whole thing. I’m anxious to get back to school in the fall, back to Spanish classes and friends who speak Spanish so I can keep practicing.

Living up the summer at the lake with the brother

So that’s it, I’m home safe and sound. This marks the end of my blog, sad day. Thanks to all of you guys who have been reading since the beginning. I really mean that, because I read some of my first few blogs the other day and I was like dude, how did anyone ever read this? I was quite whiney in those days. So if you have been reading since then, well done! If this is the only post you read, it’s really not my best work and you should read some of my other ones so you don’t think this is as good as it gets, but thanks anyways! So that’s that. I really do appreciate everyone who kept up with my travels; it gave me motivation to keep blogging when I knew there were people out there reading. So I don’t have details yet, but keep an eye out for my next blog when I go on my next whirlwind adventure across the world….¡hasta pronto!