i am the best blogger ever

Lately my thoughts have been all about Spain. I suppose it is because I know that I am not going back. Of course I want to go back. Who wouldn’t want to live a carefree life working 18 hours a week, taking advantage of the 30euro Ryanair flights to Morrocco, sipping wine on the terrace, laughing until your stomach hurts, falling in love with so many people, places, and things? My heart hurts. I am so torn. I am being pulled in so many directions, not wanting to let anyone down, including myself.

I have to remember too, the times when all I wished for was to be back in the comfort of my home, my language, and my culture. There is a time and a place for everything and I guess God is calling me for something else right now.
So that is how it goes; I have to say goodbye to some things and hello to others. Goodbye doesn’t have to mean forever, it can mean just for now. So as it is, I am saying goodbye to walking down the street with other foreigners, the smell of jasmine on my walk through the city, the beauty that is Europe, goodbye to gazpacho and choco fritos, goodbye to the money Juan still owes me, goodbye to a boy I fell for, goodbye to las cañas, el rio, el piso, los estudiantes.. los aventuros europeos. It was a fantastic run but the fun runs out at some point. I guess when you are sitting on a mountain of debt and about to accrue some more, it isn’t the most responsible thing to run off and keep procrastinating. My life is here, for now… and until the time is right again for another adventure in the Spanish-speaking world, I will embrace the here and the now. I will embrace being with my family, my best friends, the convenience of a car, and the extra curves that come with that.

Recently, Raquel reminded me of the time we were walking around Sevilla on our way to lunch after a photo-taking day. We ended up at Los Coloniales.. a favorite restaurant of ours for the pollo con salsa almendra. On our walk there, we took turns humming songs and making the other guess what we were humming. It was not out of the ordinary for us to be weird.. or normal, you decide. This led me to think of another time when we were on our way home from something, walking by the cathedral and like many other times, there was a traveling orchestra playing on Avenida Constitucion. The melody they are playing is one of my favorites. Raquel and I took a moment to twirl in the streets of Sevilla. Right on the corner in front of the Starbucks and the Cathedral. We were humming the song with the orchestra and breathing in the fresh Sevillana air. Once we got home we called friends and googled the heck out of the melody to figure out the song they were playing. It is an Italian melody, something Bambino. It is lovely, absolutely beautiful and we were lucky enough to run into it playing on the streets in Rome, near the colosseum as well. Wouldn't it be nice to have a local fountain to enjoy the day and people watch for hours? .....