When Dreams Become Reality: My First Month Living Abroad

I look around me and smile, really trying to take everything in. My mind can’t work fast enough to process the beauty around me and I feel as if when I blink it’ll all fade away and I’ll wake up back in my bed in Indiana. 

The uneven layers of rocks grind under my feet, the white foam of the ocean bubbles around my ankles, the remnants of the coarse white salt stuck on my lashes.

I look to my left and see my friends smiling and dancing in the water, trying to wash the remaining stubborn sand stuck on their legs. I look to my right and see the lit up buildings and hear the music emanating from the clubs behind me. 

I feel as if I am in somebody else’s life as I cannot wrap my head around this being my reality. Truly, I don’t know if it will ever sink in. 

As my first month of living in Spain is coming to an end I’m looking back and realizing that I am the happiest that I have been in a while. My classes are about things that I am actually interested in, my internship values me and wants to hear my thoughts and opinions, and the city of Barcelona is beyond beautiful. Even mundane things like eating lunch have gone through Cinderella’s fairy godmother as I eat sitting on my apartment balcony looking over the city. 

“It looks like you're in a 90s sitcom” my friends tease me as I show them my view. 

Never in a million years would I think the little girl from East Chicago would end up living in another country whilst traveling around Europe. 

When I was in high school, groups of students would travel to a plethora of different islands during spring break. I would listen to them talk about how they were going to the Cancun or the Canary Islands and I never understood how that was the norm for them. It seemed so otherworldly to me that I wasn’t even jealous. 

Fast forward a couple of years and now one week I’m jumping off cliffs in Mallorca and the next I’m eating muscles and drinking wine off of the coast of Costa Brava’s beaches. I’m dining on rooftops looking off at La Sagrada Familia and walking in the middle of the street while fireworks fill my vision for los Fiestas de Mercé. 

While it might not seem possible it is so important to never stop dreaming because life is filled with more possibilities than you even realize. 

When I first started college I felt trapped and didn’t think I would ever be able to escape Northwest, Indiana. Yet, regardless of all the obstacles, three years later and now I’m living in a fairy tale, trying to soak up every minute of it.