little sarah Big World

~OR~

I Didn’t Know It Would Feel Like Home

Well, here I am. Nothing new to report, really, other than being in Spain. Maybe it’s the fact that I lived here for a whole year, or the fact that Kevin’s apartment is just down the block and around the corner from where mine was, but things feel strangely…natural. Comfortable, even, and hardly like being on vacation at all. It just feels like living here.

Except that Kevin lives in a rough part of town…just kidding! But here’s a picture of him on “the gross part of Doctor Esquerdo” from our walk last night. Part of feeling like we were at home was going out and running errands, with me leading the way half the time.

This picture was taken right outside the Corte Inglés in Goya. This was one of the very first spots that Laura took me in Madrid, when I was fresh off the plane, ready to spend 9 months of my life teaching English and living Spanish. It’s funny, how once you get to know a place, you’ll come across places that were once so foreign to you, and they’ve become so commonplace. How when you first arrive, everywhere you go is like an island, a spot you arrive and spend sometime before twisting and winding your way to the next, unrelated spot. But in time you connect the dots, and a full map forms in your mind, and then its funny to look back and think “I had no idea where this was, and now I do.”

Then imagine finding yourself back in this formerly-uncharted but now altogether familiar land, as though almost no time at all had passed, and that’s where I’m at right now.

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Went to the faculty dinner last night with Kevin and his coworkers from the high school. It was a warm and fitting welcome (back) to Spain–a big meal, lots of wine, conversation that I understood most (but not all) of, and even some dancing.

It’s good to be back.