So I'm sitting in Casa, all cozy in the den with S. asleep on the couch and everybody else out enjoying a Friday night. I am supposed to be working calculus II problems but instead I am just hit with a pang of saddness. I miss Barcelona!! I'm listening to counting crows "holiday in spain" haha im pathetic.
Even though I was only there for a month, and it was a really challenging month, I feel like i grew up so much there. It sounds silly but it just all happened to fast so this is the first time I've really reflected. I mean, I uploaded the photos this week and I sat in my room just in silence. I was stunned. I had already forgotten had breath-taking the city was and how I had learned to survive and blend. I think since I spent so much of the month alone, I just developed this unique relationship with my environment- I trully felt invisible. But not in the "no one sees me way" instead in the totally liberating way. I can just close my eyes and remember exactly how I felt when I spent the entire day sitting at playa de barcelona. Literally, I woke up super early, left my apartment in St. Gervais, before anyone was awake and took a 20 minute metro ride, I walked into a Persian grocery store, bought myself a baguette and bottle of water and chocolate and then proceeded to get lost while trying to find the beach on the otherside of the Barceloneta. So I suddenly take a right down this small ally where the clothes lines between buildings obscure the sun and muts and kids play in the sheets. I see a palm tree and then suddenly I'm blinded by the sun. I squint and see an entire coastline, filled with old people playing checkers and couples on the boardwalk. There's hippies, punks, hopeless romantics, and some posh europeans. I roll up my jeans, put on my sunglasses, and find a spot on the coarse brown sand. I tuck my bag under my head, as ive already spotted the pick pockets. I lay down, close my eyes, and the sunshine is pure bliss, a sensation that I haven't felt after two years at Wellesley. I sleep for a while, read and journal, then walk the boardwalk. I walk to the pier where an attractive Spaniard nudges his friend and quietly says "mira que bella" as I walk by. ahhh!! i wish I could be back there. On that beach, with no makeup, no friends, all my valuable in a bag, and clothes I hadn't washed since before I left for Italy, I just felt beautiful. Not beautiful in a physical sense but just content with myself. I don't think I've ever felt that in the U.S. I mean, in the U.S. I feel more productive and successful but when I travel, its the only time I feel calm, even when Im completely lost. I meet complete strangers and learn from then whereas in college I feel like we hestitate to meet others and when we do we either judge them or we try to portray an image. Maybe my sense of happiness in Barcelona was based on false premises...my friends were their as Americans and I was actually able to blend pretty well and I never corrected people's assumptions if they thought I was Spanish or South American. I have never valued being biracial before this trip. Before I saw it as a complicated burden but now I see the silver lining... I was able to blend so well and change language without thinking and I also could easily conform to whatever setting I was in...which can be really exhausting but allowed me insight and access into Catalunya's culture. haha I had a lot of fun fooling people too ;) But then the wierdest thing happened...by the time I got on the plane to Amsterdam, I was ready to come back, not really to Wellesley although I love it here. I really really really missed Alabama! I missed the accents, the food and of all things, I missed Ashford. I missed miles and miles of peanut fields, horses, cows, and little white churches. As soon as I got back from Barcelona, Kate and I drove to NY to visit C-los. The whole way I would tear up at the country songs, which is completely out of character. I mean, when I really think about it, I have always felts like I never belonged in the south and I still feel that way. I definetely get along better up here...I guess my personality just suits this region better. But for the first time in my life, I realize that Bama is still my home and at the end of the day, after the mounds of criticism and issues and uncomfort, I may stick out like a sore thumb there, its still comforting in some ways.
