My Final Post

Since I last posted, well over a month ago, many things have happened, including my return from Spain. That being said, this post will be the last one for this blog. Who knows, maybe my next adventure will be blog-worthy, maybe not…

After San Sebastian, I went to London for a week. My cousin Jenna was there setting up a group of summer abroad students and I had the chance to stay in a hotel for free. London is a wonderful city. I was also floored by the fact that everyone spoke English. Laugh all you want, but after nearly 8 months of being surrounded by non-English speakers it was actually quite jarring to be of the language majority. I reveled in this fact from the moment the plane landed. I had to pass through customs and was probably more chatty than necessary with the guard. Suspicious? Probably. Halfway through blabbing at him about living and teaching in Madrid I realized that I probably sounded like one of those people who had rehearsed a story to get through customs. Luckily he didn’t mind, much.

When I arrived at the hotel my number one goal was to watch TV in English. Thanks to globalization there were plenty of American programs on the British channels. I loved every minute of it. I watched Friends, Cold Case, CSI and so much more. I even caught up on some music videos.

I saw a few of the museums London has to offer, wondered Hyde Park and enjoyed a Pims. All in all, I loved London. If I had moved abroad there, rather than Madrid, I might not have been so desperate to come home after a while. This is probably because it wouldn’t have presented the same challenges and, on the tourist level, seemed way easier to live in.

Upon return from London school was on half days, so I only had to work until 1 each day. I’d love to report that I took advantage of that time and saw more things in Madrid. Honestly, I took naps and taught private lessons. At night my friends and I went out more, mostly because we knew our time was running out.

The first weekend of June our electricity (and eventually hot water) went out. When it went out we didn’t have a massive freak-out, like most people would expect. We decided to eat the ice creams Audrey had in the freezer and wait for the electrician to come. Eventually, Monday night he came and told us that the problem was the hot water heater. It was some problem with the current circulating. Lets be honest here, they don’t teach electrician vocabulary in Spanish class, so he could have said about anything and we’d have gone with it.

Audrey and I were leaving early Thursday morning for Alicante and, after lots of time working on Spanish time, we knew we wouldn’t get a heater anytime before we left. I took chilly showers and dealt with it, since I was leaving on vacation soon.

Thursday came and we boarded our Ryanair flight. After 40 minutes in the air we landed in Alicante. The four days we spent in Alicante went something like this. Wake up. Go to Beach. Home for lunch. Lounge until dinner. Dinner. Lounge until bed. It was a lovely time with seven other wonderful ladies. We prepared our meals in the apartment and ate family style. The weekend was quite relaxing and full of laughs. Basically it was great.

Upon my return to Madrid, my experience started to go south. In May, perhaps April, my Grandpop was diagnosed with cancer. Being 91 years old, we didn’t have the highest hopes for remission, but they decided to give him radiation treatments to try and shrink the ones causing him pain. In early June my mom went to Pennsylvania to be with her family and await my arrival. When she got there Grandpop was still getting up and getting dressed for the day. He would come down stairs and basically be the Grandpop I’d left in September. The Tuesday after I got back from the beach my mom sent me an email saying that, if I wanted to, I should come home early.

Originally we had changed my ticket from July 2nd to June 27th mainly because I would’ve been one of the last few people in Madrid and I was ready to get out sooner. This time we changed it to Saturday the 20th with the hopes that I could get back to Philly in time to say goodbye. This had me leaving my school before the last day of school, which meant I had to tell them.

I’m sure you’ve heard the stereotype that Spanish people are family oriented. I got to experience that first hand on Wednesday morning when I told my director that I was leaving early. I waited for about 45 minutes outside her office. When it was my turn, she asked me what was up and before I could say anything I just started crying. She rushed me into her office and sat me down. The head teacher followed us in. It was rather scary to have these two Spanish ladies trying to get info out of me. I managed to get the words for “Grandfather” and “die” out. I was trying to explain that he was close to dying and I was going to leave early to be with him and my family, but at those two words they knew what was going on.

The offered to do anything I needed. Marisol, the director, told Eduardo and he left his class to rush in and talk to me. It took about another 45 minutes for me to calm down enough to go to class. The people at my school really are the sweetest, kindest group of teachers one could ask for. I lucked out being placed at Rosa Luxemburgo and anyone who gets that school in the future needs to know how lucky they are.

On Friday I was out doing my final gift shopping, mostly as a distraction from the situation in Pennsylvania I could do nothing about, when my mom called with the news. My Grandpop had died early Friday morning. So that was the situation I left Spain under.

I was devastated by his death, sad to be leaving my friends but delighted to be going home to my friends and family whom I had not seen since September. The only word I can come up with to describe the feelings I had were bittersweet. Bitter because I was landing in Philly only to begin preparing for a funeral, but sweet because I was finally going to see my mom and family.

Hopefully this post has given you some insight as to the abrupt end to posts. I didn’t want to leave you all hanging, though I’m sure most of the people who read this knew most of this already. Also, for those of you whom I didn’t call immediately after landing, please don’t take it as a comment on our friendship, but more a representation of my extreme mixed emotions. I promise to pick up the phone soon enough.