The night before I was due to leave Aurelia and I had a nice moment where I insisted she take a picture with me, one where after much pleading, she finally relented, although she's holding a poinsettia up very close to her face because the previous photo she wanted to block her face completely. She had been insisting that she'd send me a picture of back when she was young and beautiful, to which I responded "te conozco como eres ahora" which means "but I know you as you are now".
The group of friends I was closest with went out one last time, although half of us decided staying out until 6 am might be pushing it for us...we got churros one last time at San Gines, the famous churreria y chocolateria and headed home and home.
I left Aurelia's house at about 6 in the morning, which was definitely overkill because my flight wasn't until 10 and the ride there takes about a half hour. Although I hadn't missed or been late to a flight, I wasn't about to risk it the day before Christmas Eve. I left the Madrid airport without any overweight luggage fees (although my mother said there was a mysterious charge on the card and my tickets, so they may have just forgot to tell me). And finally after a lengthy 8 hour flight to Philadelphia, I exited my flight (spilled chocolate milk in my nice purse) and turned on my blackberry for the first time...where I proceeded to get 600 emails to my phone and a startling amount of texts messages of "where are you and why are you not responding to my texts?"
Home was just as I left it, there wasn't any culture shock of going back to America, mainly because my family acts like a crazy Spanish family anyway.
People continue to ask me how my abroad experience was...and for the past two months I've been struggling to sum up what it was really like. Adjectives like amazing and wonderful don't cover what it was like to live in a completely different country, surrounded by people you've never met before. I don't think my life was changed drastically from my experience, but at the same time people have noted I'm a different person than when I left. For the most part, all my interesting stories are now predominately centered around my life in Madrid and I can't seem to have a conversation without uttering the phrase "when I was in Madrid..."
I loved every minute of my abroad life (well, minus my classes, let's be honest) and I've seen some wonderful places I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to see this early on in my life. I'm almost scared going back to Europe to visit wouldn't compare to what it was like living there this fall.
As for my journey to discover who I was...when I think about it, I wasn't really lost and I had my own identity. I doubt I'll ever integrate myself into a Spanish or Latino culture where I'll be able to have a conversation without someone asking me "...Where are you from?" but after my time abroad, I don't necessarily identify fully with my American side either. I'm pretty much where I started, a hybrid of different cultures with the ability to fake a legit accent for a good 2 minutes until I get flustered and admit I'm American born. And if I learned anything from my current international business class (i.e. not much), it's not where you're from that counts, but how you approach the places you're going.
