Buenos días!
It’s Sunday morning, and I am finally reporting to you LIVE from Logroño!
With lots of love, of course.
I’ve been meaning to pause and craft a post throughout this last week, but a full schedule of presentations and social events for Orientation (held at the beautiful Universidad de Alcalá outside of Madrid) kept me farther away from my laptop than anticipated. So, here I am: full of cereal, fruit, coffee, and milk (the first at-home breakfast I’ve had in 7 days, which is itself a milestone, but no pasa nada), living with functioning WiFi, listening to church bells ring outside my window, and feeling ready to write a bit.
I’ll save the “Here’s what we’ve been up to” post for next time. Right now, I just want to reflect on the reality of moving your life abroad. I’ve gathered opinions from a few friends in my program, as well as one who’s just moved to Morocco, and they agree with me on this: adjusting to life in a foreign country is just a rollercoaster of emotions.
Take the bus ride from central Madrid to Logroño on Friday afternoon as an example. When I first climbed on, sticky from loading all of my baggage into the cargo area underneath the bus, a little famished and feeling less than ideal after only eating a mayo sandwich and pastries that day, unable to find my portable charger, driving into the less scenic outskirts of Madrid, I was thinking, “Ugh, I don’t think I’ve had nutrients in days. Also, these buildings are ugly. Europe kind of sucks.” All familiarity, the extent of my comfort zone? Out the bus window. Then, within an hour, my heart was singing with joyful anticipation as the ugly buildings left my sight and rolling hills began zooming by my window. After, for the next hour, there was…nothing but rolling hills, and I thought, “Oh gosh…We’re really going to live out in the-middle-of-nowhere Spain.” Worrying, worrying. Worrying.
Somewhere in here, I pulled out my earbuds and turned on an eight hour Taylor Swift playlist I’d randomly downloaded on Spotify before leaving. That’s, like, nearly the entire discography of Ms. Swift.
Now, I definitely appreciate her music, but I rarely, if ever, elect to listen to it. [I usually reach straight for alternative.] So it was strange that *this* was the gigantic playlist I had felt called to download for travel. I had a strange sense that I might need it. And in the midst of a nearly-constant pitter-pattering of unfamiliarity, and things I needed to pay close attention to in order to understand—fatigue, really—I did need something so familiar that I could just zone it out. That collection of songs from Reputation and Folklore, especially, brought me back to all of the things I know like the back of my hand, all of the normal nights in high school and college, and all of the Americana I craved after a week of so much new.
So, while the young man in the window seat beside me listened to Bad Bunny and read some book for school, I drifted in and out of snoozes with a very long Taylor Swift lullaby to help me along. I felt calmed and more confident such that, by the time I saw signs for Logroño and realized we were entering “civilization” again, I felt steadily eager, quietly confident. I was ready. I’d had my Taylor Swift and we were here.
Two days later, and I’m still riding that feeling. Thanks, Taylor Swift…I’ll check in later to see how long that high lasts. Maybe until her next album is released and I’ll become a real, professed fan :).
With love, finally, from Logroño,
Ellie
P.S. Enjoy these photos, especially the DOMINO’s in Logroño!
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