It's hitting me...

It's hitting me finally that I'm leaving. I will be home in 10 days. Today is the last day of work and classes for me. I am taking a four day vaca to Lisbon, Portugal and then finals and I fly home Friday May 10th. Holy wow. There is a new girl here at Paz y Cooperacion today from Sweden and she seems really young and sweet. She is so bright eyed and very nervous about her Spanish. Her English is awesome but her she is very much struggling with her Spanish. I am trying to help as much as I can and teach her things before I leave but how weird to see someone new come in when I am leaving. God works in funny ways and maybe this is remind me of how I started out as well. Doe-eyed and confused. Confusing little words just because you don't know the way people talk yet. She is bright I can tell and eager to work which is great but I can already see how the culture has changed me because she was freaking about when to get a translation back and this environment is so relaxed I was just like..dude...chill take your time. Frightens me a bit for this summer working in America again haha. There is most definitely going to be some reverse culture shock. No, but I don't know whether to look at her and give myself credit for being able to help her and be the veteran one leaving after four months or to get out of my head and realize have I actually learned that much since I've been here? Not to be a negative nelly but my Spanish still is not perfect I do have a way to go to being fluent. My confidence has risen significantly and my comfortableness is this office with not being the timid little American girl anymore. This is an awkward time because I want to keep charging forward and learning Spanish but I also have spent a significant amount of tears, frustrations, triumphs and crazy days here as well and I think come out of it for the better. I love Madrid and I know that I have changed. But I don't feel it. The first two months here were really hard. They were fun and exciting but I feel like I got too swept up in the pressures and trying to let this change me to enjoy where I was. Now I am not saying I was miserable because I know me and I know I was not. It was definitely hard being away from being and making and keeping friends here but I have a feeling that when I come back away from this whirlwind that I will finally see how much I have grown from this all. Traveling takes a lot out of you and is stressful. But it is so fun and so amazing and I've met some really cool strangers along the way. This past weekend in Munich we met some delightful British men on a stag party and just chatting it up with them for a while. The next night I was meeting kids who went to my own college that I hadn't know before and then other random Americans, Germans, the lot. How interesting. I say over and over again how much I love people and its true I think its fascinating to hear people's stories from their own point of view. There has been a significant amount of cattiness on my travels here just from abroad and from home about pointless stuff and although I would like to say I've stayed above it I can't say that honestly. I don't know if it has anything to do with the circumstances but I do feel like that has brought myself down a bit as well. I was in a really really good place in my life when I left the States. I expected to come abroad and just continue that path. I think being away from my family and friends, my college and the people and things that defined me and I defined so well in the past really threw me thorough a loop. I think I was trying or not trying to let the people and amazing places and adventures fill in these holes for me and I do not honestly know if I let that happen or if I blocked it out. Do not get me wrong. I loved my experience here and I would never take it back. I loved every minute of being my own in this city surrounded by a different language culture and new friends. I feel very very comfortable in Madrid but I think my problem was timing and letting myself know that I was comfortable and own that I was confident ya know? If all these things are happening you can't be so aware that you miss it but you also can't be so unaware that you're lost. Well, anyway. Madrid has given me un fuego that I will never let out and I will continue to search for the rest of my life. That is again, wicked cheesy as I often am in these quotes but I can definitely say as scary and new and unexpected it is to live abroad I know I can do it. There was a time here where I really really did not think I could and all those naive girlish dreams of mine to live in a new city every month were crushed but honestly my next adventure is right ahead of me. Senior year. But also post-grad! Being here has given me a very independence view on things and it is very strange that I will go back to the bubble of college but I do feel like if anything this has seriously given me a view of my future. Like I said I really think I need to get out step but and see all that I have accomplished here. I appreciate every moment I have had in Madrid and I look forward to coming back to the city that made me finally feel like a global citizen.