Unforgettable

After a long day of travel on Sunday in which I emotionally said goodbye to my host family and flew home with IES friends Emilie and Steve, here I am three days later with my family on the morning of Christmas Eve. It has been really weird being at home again in the sense that nothing has changed, but I have so much. I am still thinking partially in Spanish on a daily basis, and I’ve been waking up in my own bed thinking I was waking up in my homestay in Madrid. My family is super excited to have me home, and I am excited to be home. Still, I know soon after all the festivities of the holidays, after I try to impossibly describe how amazing it was to study abroad in Madrid to every single person in my extended family, I will long to return to my second home across the ocean.

Before I left Spain, I went to visit the maker of my guitar, Juan Alvarez. He was very happy to see me, and I surprised him by only speaking Spanish during the entire visit. We talked for two hours about how my experience has been and about his experience when he went to flight school in Texas without knowing any English when he was in his 20′s. He asked me to describe my time in Spain in ten words. I said, “Ha sido una experiencia que nunca voy a olvidar.” Juan agreed completely with me, saying how he still has memories of his experience abroad as if it happened “today” even though it was almost thirty years ago that he arrived in Dallas.

I hope to tell people about living in Madrid as a student in an IES Abroad program for the next thirty years and longer. The friends I’ve made, the skills I’ve gained, the places I’ve visited, and the things I have seen have all made me a better person in countless ways. I cannot wait to return to Spain again.