180º

Since this is a blog chronically my adventures here in Spain, it is only fair to be completely and totally honest.  So when I say I was heartbroken to leave Germany, this is entirely true.  I missed my brother and Laura and Laura's family so much, that sitting in the airport waiting to go back to Spain felt awful.  Also, as many new things as I had done, as many new things I had learned, I was having a hard time adjusting, making friends, etc.

I felt terribly lonely, and impossibly far away from everyone I loved and cared about.  It seemed to me that everyone in our study abroad group had made friends, or traveled with friends from their own university but me.  I was also struggling with being the only student from the northeast on the trip, and while that sounds silly, it made a difference from time to time.  We had different reference points, raised in totally different ways.  For example, when I reference a big city, I would reference New York, or sometimes Boston (and Ottawa...from time to time).  Most everyone else would mention Chicago.  Little things like that, but it made it harder to relate with people.  So by the time I returned to Granada, I was miserable.  I felt like only student only not meeting up with friends at night for coffee or drinks, the only one no one called to make plans with, and when I tried to make plans with anyone, they seemed to fall  through.  Marlboro, Potsdam, Camp, these places where I felt loved and full of people who meant so much to me, felt so very far away.

At night, I cried myself to sleep.  I Skyped my mom in tears, and struggled with the option of coming home.  The only reason that I didn't pack up and get on the first plane to Boston or New York or Montreal was I didn't know what it would do for my educational track.  It would set me back a semester, so I held on.

And then things began to change.  It started with a Skype video message I came home to one night early in October.  It was a message my mom organized, featuring three good friends from Camp this summer, just being funny and saying 'hello' in their own ways.  I then got to talk to a couple more friends from Camp in real time on Skype, and thats when things began to change.  Classes started, giving me direction during the day, and homework at night.  Especially Arabic.  And I began to make some new friends in these classes.  I was excited when I woke up in the morning to go to class, which was something that hadn't really happened in weeks.  Also, I started going to church in Granada, it was full of young people and lively music, and gradually things got better and better.

I started meeting up with people during the weekends, meeting up for homework study parties.  The city didn't seem quite so frightening, and I began to explore it more.  I discovered a coffee shop very close to my school, and started doing homework there.  Little by little I made a routine for myself.  And then, one day I woke up and realized that things had done a 180º turn.

Its time to prepare for next week's midterms now and I'm more than halfway through my time here in Granada.  Admittedly, I still miss friends and family more than I can say, but I also am happy to be here in Spain.  How often will I have a chance to live in Europe, to travel through Spain?  Its an adventure, and I am glad I came on it, no matter the challenges it has presented.