We are currently less than two weeks away from our two month trip to Argentina. We will be in Buenos Aires, Argentina visiting with family from February 10-April 19th. We are also planning on renting a car and doing a little South American roadtrip. We haven't finalized it all yet, but are planning on driving from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, the glorious Malbec wine region of Argentina. From there we want to head over to Santiago, Chile and drive up the coast of Chile into Peru. We will get to check out the Chilean wine country and all of these awesome national parks (volcanoes, geysers, and oh yeah the Andes in the backdrop of everything we do :). Once in Peru we want to quickly check out Machu Picchu and Lima and then head back to Buenos Aires. I am incredibly excited for our trip together, as neither Jonathan nor I have ever been to South America. And then once we return to Spain from Buenos Aires it will be the beginning of beach season here in Spain and our apartment will become a revolving door of friends and family until we pack it in and head back to the states on August 1st. With this in mind, I must acknowledge that a significant portion of our time here abroad it coming to an end and I thought I would reflect on it a bit.
We arrived here in Spain on September 3rd, already almost 5 months ago. One of main goals while living here in Spain was to know what it feels like to live in another country. A lot of my friends have asked me why we don't do more traveling while we are here. The first and more obvious reason is that we don't have jobs and are living off of a savings account and can't afford to travel more. The second is that if we spend the entire year traveling we would be in vacation-mode; we still wouldn't know what it is to live in a different country. So after the first few weeks of "OMG I'm in Spain and everything's awesome" wore off I began to settle into a more routine schedule and began to know more about what it is to live here in Galicia. I absolutely love the lifestyle here in Galicia and feel a closeness to it that I will for sure take with me wherever I may live (minus that whole drinking in the afternoon thing - can't get away with that in the states). When people here ask us if we think we could live here happily, it is always a complex question to answer. More simplistically the answer is yes. But do I prefer to live in the US? absolutely, yes. And this isn't just because all of my family and friends are there. There is a mode of living, having access to everything at your fingertips, that I have become very accustomed to (and I'm not just referring to quests I have gone on here to find basil and peanut butter). But when I begin to think more deeply about knowing what it is like to live in Spain I'm still not sure if I really do. As stated earlier, we don't have jobs. Not having a job is in some ways a very freeing thing, but in other ways has been difficult for me.
After I finished my Spanish classes I applied to be a volunteer with the Red Cross so as to further my Spanish immersion and to gain more experience for my career. But what was more important for me was to have a very concrete and obligatory purpose for getting up every day. After my Spanish classes ended I found myself struggling with remaining productive when I didn't have any daily obligations. When in December I realized that the Red Cross was not going to call me to volunteer I felt deeply disappointed. I still had three months until we were going to leave for South America, which is too little time to go around beginning to try to find another volunteer position, but at the same time a lot of time for me to keep myself busy and find something productive to do. I enrolled in painting classes, learned about early soul music and the history of Africa, continued cooking, painted the apartment, read a lot, and continued with my Spanish. My Spanish. One of my major objectives in Spain is to learn Spanish. I figured that while I'm living in Spain it would be good to be able to speak the language and not have to be escorted everywhere by Jonathan. Also, it would be wonderful for my social work career if I were able to practice bilingually. I initially started my studies with 2 months Spanish classes at this local language institute. There I was given a good foundation of grammar and vocabulary. When I left the school I was beginning to learn more advanced grammatical things and found that what I needed most was more practice with my conversational skills, quickly conjugating verbs. Since then I have progressed in this and can pretty quickly and accurately express my thoughts. But in truth, after I finished my classes I didn't work as hard at my Spanish as I should have and am disappointed with my current Spanish level. I am currently reading a novel in Spanish that Begona gave me as a Three Kings gift ("El Tiempo Entre Costuras", which is a really popular book here in Spain now) and try to speak as much as possible with my family here, but even still I feel a long way off from where I want to be. I have noted though that when a cousin from Argentina came to Galicia a few months ago to visit and also while I was in Asturias last week, that I understood them much better than I do the family here in Galicia. It's possible that the dialect of Spanish here is difficult to understand because of it's Gallego (Galicia's language, a mix between Spanish and Portuguese) influence and that maybe I'm a lot better than I really think I am. I'll have to report back once we're in Argentina. But until then, I compare my Spanish studies to growing out my hair. There are some days when I feel like my hair has really grown since I began growing it out since August and am excited at the prospect of where it will be this August when we leave here (will it be long enough to put in a pony tail?). But then there are other times when I look at my hair and the length that it has grown since august and can't believe that it's still so damn short. In those moments it takes all my my self control not to just cut it all off and go back to my short do.
Another way in which I don't feel that I have fully immersed myself in Spanish living is in my social life. We spend a lot of time with family here, who the majority are old Spanish retirees. They are very sweet, but it's like living in one of those old people compounds in Florida; my social life here leaves a little something to be desired. I have become closer with my art teacher, Cristina, and have been going out to lunch with her weekly, which I've really enjoyed. Jonathan and I also met Andrew, an American currently living in Samieira, the next town over, who is teaching English at a high school in Pontevedra. We have gone out a few times with Andrew for a few drinks.
But in the end, not having a job and not having an active social life has made me at times feel very isolated here in Spain. I spend a lot of time on the internet trying to stay closely connected to my friends and family. Spain has a very social culture and people don't stay cooped up in their homes; everyone is out and about in the streets and in the bars. Because of my feelings of isolation, which in nature are very un-Spanish, I'm not sure if I really do know what it is to live Spain. I feel like instead of moving our whole lives, that we put our "real lives" on hold to do some sort of personal experiment. And in a lot of ways I am very eager to return to the US and reestablish these "real lives" in whatever city we choose to live in. What I am trying convey here though is not that I am unhappy. I am very happy here and do not regret choosing to move here. And since I have moved here I have grown and learned a lot. But at the same time, I feel as though there are parts of my personality, my sociality and my desire to be productive and work hard, that I have lost in my time here. I am not ready to return home quite yet. I am very excited for our vacation in South America and to share with all of my friends and family my life here in Galicia. But when August 1st comes, I will be ready to reclaim those parts of me that I have lost and together, with the ways that I have grown while here, I hope to be a better person.
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