A Warm Welcome Home

(Tuesday, July 19^th 6:45pm)

Delayed flight

Lost luggage

Violated

A hearty welcome home indeed. What's up America! Good to be home.

As though it were the final exam to this past year's experience, coming back hasn't been easy and I haven't passed yet – I'm currently in Miami waiting for my connecting flight to Detoit with only 30 minutes to spare despite a 5 ½ hour layover. Let me elaborate.

I was first greeted with the news in Madrid that my flight was overbooked, but luckily I arrived in time not to get pushed – though they gave incentive to volunteer.

Next I find the flight is delayed an hour and a half, which actually turns into 2 and a half, but no big deal because I have such a long layover in Miami, right?

During the first flight the man in front of me leans back his seat all the way and the grouchy French man behind me taps on me seat telling me to put mine up because “his legs are too long.” And right on cue, crying baby commences. Only 8 hours 40 minutes left...

Then I find myself waiting over an hour and a half for the luggage – it seems the whole airport is gathered around the baggage claim wheel-thing getting grouchier and grouchier by the minute because the bags are normally there waiting for you once you get through customs and many people have a connecting flight within the hour.

I try to ignore everyone around me whose irritability is getting contagious which I hate but I don't succumb to crabbiness despite their best efforts, and even when they announce that our luggage is actually at dock 1 and not 2 and the whole world shifts over their, I'm still telling myself all will be alright, there's still time.

Still 20 minutes later I still don't see my luggage and another announcement comes on saying that the luggage is actually coming out of both docks, but because of all the other arriving flights they're mixed and now there's even more people and some airport employees are starting to pull luggage off the belt bringing the total places you have to check for your luggage to 5 or 6 places.

Finally, with still just enough time not to worry (too much) I find my sad little red bag with its broken handle and make my way through customs and then through a confused maze of people and signs that eventually lead me to someone taking the bag I just found and adding it to a huge pile of bags that will probably end up at the north pole but I don't care at this point and so I continue to security.

One long line later I'm the random person chosen to go through the new high-tech body scanners but ask for an opt out and find myself thoroughly examined by a bored female staff member who wasn't kidding when she said she'd get up close and personal in your business. Sigh.

Feeling slightly violated I make my way to my gate and find that I will be flying to Detroit with 60 hyper and annoying high school students from Paraguay and what seems to be another loud student or volunteer group from Haiti.

And yet, despite all that, I never got all that grouchy or impatient or even worried. I think I've gotten quite good at traveling by this point. Well, that or the fact I've felt slightly numb since leaving a billion hours ago.

I just thought it'd make for a good story.

If nothing else goes wrong, should be home in just under 4 hours.

Actually, I'm home now if you're reading this.

Love,

Katie

Update:

Arriving home

Home after 2 long flights 

With Dad

With Donna

The end of a journey

Time plays such funny tricks on you.

For so many moments of my life abroad these past 10 months, going home was always more of an idea than reality, something that was supposedly going to happen but always so far in the future that it never quite seemed real.

Quite suddenly, I am returning home to Michigan tomorrow.

I exceeded every expectation that I had for this journey – especially when it came to wanting to slow down. Not only did I get my wish, but in less-than-happy moments it felt like it would never come to an end, in fact (i.e. a rough week of classes/students). This is the not so desirable forever-feeling.

Then there were the many weekends in the woods, climbing this hill or following that river, feeling like you could never possibly be anywhere else doing anything else, that you would forever add muddy miles to your trusty old hiking boots while discovering new smells and sounds, all the while just walking under a clear blue sky or on fresh white snow or under some friendly rain.

Or perhaps it was the many moments traveling alone on a train or ferry, staring out the window at mountains or deserts or oceans, your thoughts so entangled that sometimes it feels like you're thinking about everything at once while other times it feels like you're thinking of nothing at all, but you're so at peace no matter what kind of thinking it is that it doesn't really matter. The beautiful thing is that you never think of the end. You can never imagine being any other way.

These are the good kind of forever-feelings.

Such moments stretch to infinity and can leave you feeling rather blindsided when they do come to an end, making you feel almost betrayed by them – weren't they supposed to keep you wrapped forever in wonder and joy and a sense of freedom? You forget that journeys end and you try to blame it on them, but they are just journeys after all – they don't make promises any more than toasters do.

I leave tomorrow. How strange it feels to see and think the words. It's certainly not that I haven't thought about coming home – au contraire. I have missed my home, friends and family beyond words, but I've also been happy and living a life here, and no matter how much I thought about it and you all, it never seemed to click. It has just been so long and I've gotten so used to my way of life over here that it's hard to believe it will be over soon.

I feel an intense heaviness on my chest and the weight of the past year on my shoulders, afraid to be forgotten and left behind. Such are experiences, I have learned, feeling almost like a friend you have made instead of a place you have visited, pulling one hand behind you to stay while the other is being pulled forward toward the future. They feel betrayed you are leaving – you had gotten so close and seemed so happy – and you try to explain to them that they will be coming with you in a way, but they don't understand. And so the tug-of-war.

That said, perhaps you might be confused to know that I am very, very happy indeed to be coming home, that I am looking forward to trying on my old life like the pair of skinny jeans so many people keep in their closest, ready to see after such an extended period of time if they will fit them once again.

I am nervous and a little afraid of transitioning from the life I have here back to the life of a student, and at a graduate level this time to boot, and with just 3 weeks to be back home before moving to Minnesota. I'm slightly overwhelmed just thinking about it, but I want people to understand, too, how excited I am to be moving on. I have had my year of “breathing” as I've so often put it, and more than once over these past few months I have felt the pull to come back home. Yet I've lived so much over here, too, that it's a complicated mix of feelings.

Yes, I am ready to come home, but by saying that I want it to be understood that it does not mean I want to leave. Never before have I been so torn about anything.  

I'm not sure how to end this, nothing seems adequate. I feel beyond capable of explaining what's going through my mind, how I feel right now. I wonder if a body, a mind, was ever meant to experience so many conflicting emotions at once. 

The end of another journey, but not the end. I suppose that will have to suffice.

Love and miss you all and see you soon,

Katie

Pueblo Ingles / English Village

June 1st

You know what's great?

Free transportation, food and 4-star hotel lodgings in the mountains in southern Spain...

...in exchange for talking to people for 8 days.

I heard of this program, Pueblo Ingles (English Village) from a student I've been tutoring in Madrid - basically, it's an English immersion program for Spaniards to improve their English by spending 5-8 days (depending on the program) in a village somewhere in Spain speaking over 100 hours with native speakers.

I was accepted into the 8-day program in Coto del Valle, 5 hours south of Madrid by bus. It is a resort smack dab in the heart of the Cazorla National park in the Jaen region.

I've got nothin' but time and English as my native tongue so I'm goin!

Love,
Katie

Segovia, Spain

Sometime mid-June 2011...


I LOVE CASTLES.

Like this one:

The Alcázar of Segovia 

Look at all that nothing in the background!

I'm a die-hard Tudor junkie, but that's not to say I don't enjoy some good medieval Spanish palaces and history, too.


I just love 'em. So grand and mysterious and full of stories, so different from today and so beautiful.


This one is The Alcázar of Segovia (Arabic for fortress or palace) and it's smack in the middle of a big dry... area? Well, the whole city of Segovia is a like a fairytale city in the middle of a sandbox, truthfully. 


I am smitten with this city. 


Got off to a good start with a ham sandwich, where I got to see a grouchy old barman cut it right from the leg itself:

mmmm

In fact, as bizarre as it was at first to see legs of ham hanging around everywhere (and I mean everywhere - the supermarket, bars, restaurants... I even went to a ham museum!) it's pretty much the most delicious ham I've ever had, every time. You just gotta get used to the hooves watching you eat. 


Segooooovia! Such a pretty city. It's got these great roman Aqueducts, too:

The Roman Aqueduct of Segovia

Aqueduct what!

Looks like it'd just topple right over if you sneezed on it the wrong way.


Wikipedia tells me it might have been started in the first century, is 818 meters long and made from 25,000 granite blocks - and without any cement, nothin'! Achoo. 


I feel like I could write a song about this city. 

Segovia

and again, Segovia

I wish I had more interesting stories to share about what went on, but really, sometimes you just show up somewhere, look at a lot of stuff, and leave. 

Lookin a little chubby at
the top of the tower of the castle

View from the castle

And just because I love them so much, back to the castle - only the inside now:

You might live in a castle, but this is what's
outside of it. Sand. box.

Gorgeous ceilings.

I love royalty!!

See the wee kings and queens staring at you?

I really have nothing to say. So I shall leave you with this last photo:

Blargh! Off with yer head...s.

Love you!
Katie

Toldeo, Spain

Saturday, June 11th

Turn on your oven to 400 degrees F.

Now, expand it to the size of a city.

Walk in.

You may now perhaps be able to understand my day trip to Toledo, Spain.

It's the opposite of everything I knew in France. Not only surface-of-the-sun hot, but red and dry and bright.

It's a beautiful place to be sure, but I am learning just how much heat can affect me. I am simply drained of energy, listless. Excited as I was to go on this day trip, once I was in the city walls it was like trying to drag a dead whale around behind me.

Toledo, Spain 

I felt so weak, I actually had to sit down regularly to recuperate a bit of strength from time to time - this coming from a gal who can normally hike for hours at a time no problem! Bah.

I would then wobble to the next street where I would seek out once again the least-hot stone something or other to sit on while poor Alberto probably worried about having to call my family to explain their relative had up and melted in the middle of Spain.

Inside the city

We did enjoy a nice meal indoors where it was much cooler and where the people were rowdy and loud and even smoking despite the ban. They were all relatively old and the smokers probably couldn't care less they were breaking the law since they had been smoking for 50 years in the same restaurant before the ban came out. So sassy!

Anyway, there was, believe it or not, a river in this place, but I swear even the water looked dry. We found a nice path around it that provided some shade:

No really, look hard, there's water...

Well there was some shade anyway...

I was feeling a bit more alive after the walk, which is where the energy came from for the following photo, which also quickly left me after the effort of lifting my arms like that...

An adventure is an adventure no matter what the temperature!

Love,
Katie

Conozco solo el tiempo presente

"So.. wanna go to Egypt today?" asks Alex.

I think about it.

"Yea sure why not," I reply.

Alex is one of my language exchange buddies, and while he's actually from Romania, he's lived in Spain since he was young and so he speaks perfect Spanish. When we meet up, we like to go to a particular park where there is the Temple of Debod that came from Egypt as a gift to Spain for helping them out a while back, and it's pretty nifty, especially the carvings on the inside which are so old you can barely make them out.

From Wiki - The Temple of Debod

To be honest, I've lost the initial momentum I had in my motivation to learn Spanish (I blame the heat) and can't seem to learn the past tense all that well. I know if I could just sit down and teach myself I could get somewhere, but I'm bent on learning by listening this time, but this darn past tense will not stick.

I realize as I'm trying to explain this to Alex that "Conozco solo el tiempo presente." I only know the present tense.

Who knows if I'm saying it right, but he nods and laughs saying, "Well good for you, then you can live more fully in the present since that's all you can talk about!"

I laugh too and enjoy this little philosophical twist on my inability to speak much Spanish, and realize that really, that's what this past year has been about, that's what it should always be about. Sure, you shouldn't forget about the past or ignore the future, but don't harp on 'em either.

Nothing grand today folks, just a warm little moment to share with ya'll.

I'm also playing with it to see if it works as a blog title. Let me know if you like it.

Bisous,
Katie