Tiempo y Conecciones

Believe it or not, it has been 5 weeks since I left Flagstaff. It has been difficult for me to get a grasp on time here; does a week really last a week when you feel like it’s barely been a day? I admit there have been times when I’ve wanted nothing more than to take the Metro to the Madrid Airport and stow away on the next flight back to Arizona. But at the same time, when it occurs to me I have 9 more months left (only 9 more months?!) I wonder how I could possibly waste a single moment here not being excited and passionate and bold.

This isn’t to say that every day here needs to be a completely new experience. This weekend I’ve had a pretty bad head cold, and done almost nothing but lay around. But one of the things I am slowly learning here is to find the virtue of every moment, good and bad. To realize that I need quiet, sleepy days just as much as I need the strenuous adventure ones. It’s finding balance, and it’s difficult but worthwhile.

This past week has been the best one I’ve had here so far (other than being sick). When I ask myself why this is, what made it better than the rest, I find it difficult to pinpoint an exact answer. The fact that I am beginning to actually see/hear improvement in my Spanish, that my classmates are becoming more interested and willing to communicate with me, a sudden realization that I have my whole life ahead of me to learn and explore and love– all of these things have given me hope and made me feel better. Underneath it all, though, it is finding connections between cultures and people and places and ideas that have made this week wonderful. Becoming more adjusted to the way things are here has made me realize that, despite the sometimes vast, chasm-like differences in the actions and attitudes here compared to the U.S., beneath every gesture and word it is possible to find a similarity. Over many years, people have developed the need to give labels to everything and everyone; these can vary from “wrong” and “right” to “Spanish” and “American”, “girl” and boy”, “rich” and “poor”, etc. It is absolutely necessary to define things, I know this, but I feel that much of our inability to change the world for the better comes from this inherent belief that what defines us also separates us. We look for the differences first, in order to make comparisons that give us a sense of place and time, and then so often fail or forget to look for similarities - connections.

And yet, there are so many that completely bypass language. Sitting in class on Friday afternoon, I can feel the familiar excitement among my peers for the weekend, and the familiar frustration in the teachers. When we go to check out at the Grocery Store, everybody tries to find the shortest line. When my host brother’s phone was stolen from him last weekend, everybody in the family was startled and a little frightened, because it doesn’t matter if you live in a city or a small town, getting robbed is something that “only ever happens to other people”. There’s always going to be that kid in class who gives the most bullshit answers on purpose. You will find that in the course of your life you will meet people over and over again who have some connection to you and who you are - just this past week I met a Canadian studying abroad here who knew someone at NAU and found out my new yoga teacher studied abroad with AFS as well.

These connections are how the world…works. And I think that’s beautiful.

And whether or not this is because we’ve chosen to make it work this way or it was “meant” to work this way or it only seems to work this way, it makes me realize that we have no reason whatsoever not to explore this world to the best of our ability. This doesn’t mean you have to hop on a plane and fly to Morocco (although, man, that would be so cool), it means that each day we must dare to find those connections, sometimes to make those connections. It's the only way that we are ever going to be able to change anything about ourselves and our lives and our world.

I've probably been listening to my Filosofia teacher too much, with all this abstract talkin'. 

Anyways, I'm doing fine, and I am really happy here.