MITZI: Nostalgia

Disclaimer.  I am sitting alone in the Barcelona airport with all my luggage at 1 in the morning.  I am tired and I still have 17ish more hours of traveling ahead of me. :)  And there are police riding around the terminal on segways... I feel safe.

I can’t believe it’s over.  I seriously just don’t understand.  Did I really just live in Spain for four months?  I definitely feel like I ran out of time, it just went by so fast!!  I was very sad to leave, I kept thinking ‘I don’t want to go back to reality...’  Which is so true.  This whole experience has felt like a dream.  I think that when I wake up in my own bed on Sunday morning that this whole experience will really become like a dream.

Leaving really was bittersweet.  I hate to leave Sevilla and the lifestyle I have become accustomed to, but I am also super pumped to be home for Christmas and spend time with friends and family. 

Sitting here looking back I see that Sevilla really offered me a lifestyle that the US never could.  One of tranquility and self-realization.  I learned a lot about myself and my own independence.  I feel like I have changed, but I can’t really tell still being here.  That’s another reason why I am excited to go home, to really see how my time here studying abroad has changed me.  I really want to bring back with me a part of the mindset that I have now about priorities, and what causes me stress.  I have been so relaxed and more open to new and different things.  I want to be able to stay openminded and remember the importance of my priorities I have had here.

I still just can’t comprehend the things I have seen and experienced over these last four months.  It’s some people’s life dream to go to Italy and I just nonchalantly decided to take a weekend trip there.  It’s just crazy.  I am so appreciative to everyone and everything that helped get me here, I really have been so blessed.  Not just Italy either, Ireland, France, Africa, lots and lots of Spain...  I am one very lucky girl.

What I would like to leave you with may be a little cheesy to some, but I love it.  So there was a Christian king ruling in Sevilla centuries ago and the city adored him.  During his reign his son decided that he was going to try and take over the throne.  However, the people of the city loved him so much that they stuck by him and fought for him and he remained king.  As a thank you to the people of the city he gave the city a motto: NO8DO.  The 8 is in calligraphy and it means a spool of yarn.  A spool of yarn in Spanish is called a ‘madeja.’  So with a play on words it sounds like ‘no madeja do’, or ‘no me ha dejado’ which means it (the city) has never left me.  I really really like this because I know that my own experience from Sevilla will never leave me, because it has changed me.

I hope that you have enjoyed our posts and that they weren’t too long or boring or random or confusing.  But this was my experience in a nutshell.  And I loved it, absolutely adored it. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

NO8DO <3

Mitzi