June. Hot. Pretending to study. So much Spanish. Ice cream. Humidity. Exams. Last trip. Allergies. Friends. Goodbyes.
That's what June has been like so far.
Not bad. I'll get to the emotional part at the end, but this first part will be just about my end of school year trip with my friends from school. (Most of them).
June 1st I left with the kids of Primero de Bachillerato on the end of course trip. 5 days, 4 nights in Andalusia, southern Spain.
The first day we went from Valladolid to Córdoba, stopping every 2 hours as was (strangely) mandatory. So the 7 hour trip went to longer than 8. A night and half a day in Córdoba, seeing the famous mosque (now church) and the beautiful streets and patios of the old city.
The next afternoon we got in the bus again and went to Sevilla (Seville) where we spent a night and a day seeing the beautiful city. That included Plaza España, the streets, and the cathedral.
That night we headed to the coast, to a camping site. And got ourselves 5 cabins. There we stayed the remaining two nights. There was the beach, a monastery, and a national park.
The last day on the way home we stopped in Mérida. A city with as many Roman monuments as Rome itself (or something like that).
That concluded one of the coolest Spanish trips I've went on with some of the best people.
Well it's almost time. I'm into my 10th month here in Spain. It's gone by fast, but also slowly (especially for my family, I know). It's been a great year. One to never forget, for sure.
And I don't think I'd be able to forget it even if I tried. During this year I have changed quite a bit, and learned more than I can remember, literally.
But now it's about time I head back to my family and friends and home in the USA.
This week I've said "Adiós" for the last time too many times to count. And I still have 3 days left of more goodbyes.
One of the hard things about doing an exchange year is that in the end, your new life that you've made has to end. And you don't truly know if you'll make it back to see the people you met and came to know again. You went from foreign to familiar. But you have to leave to become foreign again. Not knowing if you can or will be able to return to that familiarity again.
This quote (that I found through a fellow exchange student [Anne Chase]) sums this up very well.
"You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place…like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are no at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again." Azar Nafisi
Now that I've arrived to my second set of goodbyes, I understand this quote better. It makes sense. I might not have understood it before I left to Spain. Because at that time I didn't know how much I was going to change, or that I would change. I didn't really understand that. But looking back, I can see it very clearly. And this quote explains exactly how I've been feeling since the beginning of June.
So I say "Goodbye Spain… for now."
Un saludo, Miguel Sabol
