ALMOST OVER

This post was written about three weeks ago. Sorry that it's late everyone! I had been pretty busy.

The fact that my journey on this wonderful experience is soon over is heartbreaking. I have so many memories here in this beautiful country. Amazing ones, and quite a bit of horrible ones. There is so much that has happened between the time I left my little town of Lutz, Florida and now. It’s going to be hard to leave this place where I have such an abundance of memories, friends, and family.

At this very moment, I’m on a train back from Madrid to my town. I’m coming back from the end of the year Rotary trip, where 36 other amazing exchange students and I went on a bus tour across the south of Spain and Portugal. It was eleven days of non-stop excitement and learning. It was a time to deepen relationships with friends- connections that I know will last a lifetime; it was a time to learn a plethora of things that I didn’t know about the country that I have been living in for the past year. All in all, it was a time to connect deeply with everything around me- people, countries, culture, landscapes, food, architecture, and much, much more.

Now that I’m at the end of my exchange, I can judge how much my Spanish has improved. It blows my mind when I read back on things I had written in school, or reread early conversations with friends over social networking sites. I think to myself, how could I have not known how to say “do you know” in Spanish?? Or that I didn’t know how to say “I’m sorry”, or things like that. It really is unbelievable. Now, there are very few things that I can’t say or understand. I can say anything I want to, without having to stop and think about correct grammar or pronunciation. I’m actually having a lot more problems with my English than my Spanish. Thank God for autocorrect, or this report would look like a second grader wrote it. I guess that that happens to everyone though, when they go to a foreign country for a year and speak very little English. I’m happy with my language skills, but everyday I still try to improve it as much as I can.

To be honest, I’m more scared to return home than I was even to come here to Spain. It’s the most terrifying thing… I really haven’t kept in contact with people back home, so I have no idea what I’m about to walk into. And it’s going to be pretty hard leaving a country, and a life, that I know so well and love.