El Dia Final

Tuesday, August 2

My last day in Spain.

(I never count travel days.)

I had no idea what to do with myself today. I sat around my room and read for a while. I walked a few blocks and tried to window shop and just soak in some Madrid, but it was too hot to be comfortable outside.  I came inside to use the internet, but even that was making me restless.

I guess my body just knows it’s almost over, and doesn’t want to give up without a fight.

My final plan for Spain was to go see the Flamenco Ballet just a couple blocks from my hostel, and I’m incredibly grateful I did.

The show was Carmen, the Spanish opera, but only the dancing was performed live.  There were traditional Spanish costumes. There was fan dancing, castenettes, matadors, and really just all things Spanish.

The show was fantastic, and it was a perfect culmination of my stay.

It was just so Spanish, for lack of a better phrase. And it was a beautiful show that captured my attention through every minute and had me holding my breath in the final scenes.

I’m sure the girl sitting next to me thought I had a nervous tick, because I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to stomp and clap along with all of the music, since Flamenco is (roughly) a Spanish version of tap dancing.

Overall, it was just a perfect way to end my night, and I’m so glad I went today instead of another day of the trip.

From here, I’m just going to call it a night early, since I’m planning on leaving my hostel at 7:30 tomorrow morning to give myself plenty of time at the airport.

And oddly, I’m not that sad to be leaving.

I don’t want to go - don’t get me wrong. But I think I said my Spanish goodbyes to Oviedo, and Madrid has just been a method of transitioning myself back to the real world. I’ve started getting emails about work and school, and I’ve spoken to my family and friends about plans for when I’m home, and really everything has been preparing me to leave Spain.

I think also, that I’m not worried about leaving because I know it’s not goodbye forever, just adios for now.

I’m sure I’ll be back.

Whether it’s a year from now, five years, ten or twenty, I know I’ll be here again, I’ll be traveling again, and this will not be a once in a lifetime experience. Though it has been worthy of the phrase, I refuse to allow my trip to be only once.

I don’t believe anything should be shut into a box like that, wrapped up in the neat little phrase “once in a lifetime.”

Because if I never expect something this amazing to happen again, what am I waiting for?

Instead, I’ll call it unique. And wonderful. And fantastic. And fulfilling and adventurous and beautiful and eye-opening. 

And fun. Most of all, fun.

But once in a lifetime? Maybe for some people, but not just once in mine. 

Si llueva, llueve sin fin

Tuesday, August 2

It rained last night in Madrid.

Thanks for the weather update; I’m sure you’re saying to yourself.

But it was worth sharing, because rain here is an anomaly.

Until it happened, I couldn’t actually imagine rain pouring down on Madrid. The city is so hot and so outdoors oriented that it seemed impossible. What would everyone do with their sidewalk café if it rained? Where would the hoards of people walking through Puerta del Sol head for the night? What about the dozens of jobless Spaniards who call Puerta del Sol or the park a few blocks South their homes?

I still don’t know how all of those people handled it, but standing on my balcony last night, watching it rain and lightening a little and thunder was beautiful in an unexpected fashion.

The Spanish have a saying that I’ve heard several times; it’s the title of this blog.

Si llueva, llueve sin fin.

It’s not so different from our saying, “when it rains it pours.”

And while that was definitely true in Oviedo, where the weather is much cooler and living in the shadows of the mountains brings lots of rain, it’s not quite as true here in Madrid.

It only rained for maybe 15 minutes last night. Call me crazy, but it almost felt as if Madrid simply willed the rain to stop.

For the same reason it’s so hard to imagine it raining here, I can easily believe that the city has the kind of magic.

Travel Truths

Monday, August 1

There are a handful of travel truths I’ve learned along the way.

While most of them are only self-truths, and I can’t vouch for them across the board, I still feel they’re worth recording.

#1 - It is possible to wake up without an alarm clock. I have survived now for 34 days without an alarm to wake me up. I was late one time. Weirdly, I consider it one of the greatest triumphs of this trip for myself that I’ve managed to make this work. Each day, I just let the sun and the noise wake me up, I check my iPod to figure out the time, and I adjust accordingly. It’s been an adjustment but never bad.

#2 - The greatest feeling in the world is clean feet. While it’s not something I would’ve expected, the loveliness of clean feet is hard to describe. After coming home from the beach or from exploring Oviedo or Madrid, the one thing that’s guaranteed to make me feel right with the world is stepping onto a clean rug after a shower or a rinse and knowing the grime is gone from my feet. After about the age of 8, your feet are really the only thing that makes contact with the earth anymore. You can’t just go play in the sand or in a park, but your feet take you everywhere, and often that shows. Of course, cleaning my feet also exposes how callused and blistered they’ve been, but so it goes.

#3 - Travel Reading is the best. I’ve blogged about this before, but really reading has been an essential part of this trip for me. It’s been a way to explore new cafes and parks; it’s been a relaxing adventure instead of the sometimes-stressful excursions and nights out and hikes to Jesus and the rest; and it’s been a solitary way to unwind and relax.

#4 - The only real knowledge is experience. If there’s any lasting truth I will take from this trip, it’s this idea. You can’t really know and understand something until you’ve experienced it. I studied Spanish for 6 years, and yet I’ve learned so much more in the last 5 weeks than I imagined I still had to learn. I can tell my Spanish has improved immensely. I can speak with the hostel front desk and the cleaning lady in just Spanish, I can ask questions at the grocery store, I asked a man today for directions. And while I might have known some of the vocabulary and could’ve probably written these things down before, this month has gotten rid of my shyness about Spanish. I know it’s hard to imagine me being shy while I ramble on about life, but I promise that I am with Spanish, or rather was. I hope I never learn this newfound confidence.

If nothing else, I have a wealth of knowledge and experiences that I will continue to draw on for the rest of my life. I can only hope the future will bring more opportunities to experience culture and language first-hand. 

Muchas gracias

Monday, August 1

I wanted to make sure to take the time to thank all of you who have stopped by to read this blog at some point.

To my understanding, I actually have a fairly respectable group of family and friends who have read my ramblings with patience and love, and even excitement.

The reality is that this blog was meant to be about me and for me, as a log of what I experienced while here.

But the motivation behind it, on days when writing a blog seemed like just about the last thing I wanted to do, was always knowing that there we people who wanted to read it. That day might have seemed perfectly normal to me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t share some pictures and insights and experiences with my people from home.

So thank you. Whether you’ve read one blog or twenty or all of them, thank you for taking the time to visit and to support. This adventure wouldn’t be the same without my blog and the memories I’ve preserved here, and you have been the needed push.

As I wind down my trip and head into my last full day of Spain, it’s odd to realize how much I’ll miss writing. While it’s not what I expected, it’s been very therapeutic and much needed to write all of the time.

I probably won’t continue with blogging after I get back to the U.S., although I will be sure to put up a few post-travel blogs about the transition back into live at home. It’s just too hard for me to devote the necessary time during the school year.

But thank you again for a wonderful summer. I hope I haven’t been too boring or too long-winded (though I’m sure I’ve been both at times). I hope you’ll stick with me through the next few posts. Leaving this place is going to be hard. 

New Conversations

Sunday, July 31

Have you ever had a one-day friend?

It’s kind of an odd concept to be friends with someone for only one day, but that’s pretty much what happened to me today.

I had met this sweet girl Kierra in Oviedo. She was in the same program with a group from Philadelphia, and was even in my class during the mornings. And while I did know her, I didn’t know her very well.

Nonetheless we ended up booking the same hostel in Madrid, so I invited her along to my only plans for Sunday - to go to church in the morning and then walk around the royal gardens.

Mass was beautiful and very ornate. The cathedral is huge and since it is the central church in Madrid, it is home to more than 20 priests, 3 bishops, 2 archbishops and a cardinal. The cardinal presided over mass but the rest all helped out with readings, incense, communion and every little detail. I’ve never been to a mass with that many people in the ceremony or in the crowd.

Kierra is not Catholic, so after mass I explained some of the traditions and a few of the beliefs and what had happened. We walked through the royal gardens and explored, and it was just really great to have someone there.

I was worried Madrid was going to be lonely for these four days, but having her around today made the whole thing seem quick and made the day speed by. And even though Kierra leaves early tomorrow, it is great to have known her.

We ended up getting dinner and then coming back to the lobby for the free Sangria. Everyone in the hostel was chatty, so we quickly got to talking with a few other girls, and it was wonderful to hear their stories and backgrounds and talk about random things from not tipping your waiter in Spain to Harry Potter and Disneyland, and more serious things like the difference between white woman hair and black hair.

That led us into a much deeper conversation about the stereotypes we are all expected to live up to, how much the media degrades normal people, and our own struggles with living up to and giving up on those expectations. It was eye-opening and enlightening, and certainly not a conversation I expected to have, let alone with three relatively random strangers from all different parts of the U.S. in the lobby of a hostel in Madrid.

They’re random, the things that bring us together, but often they’re beautiful.