my home away from home: MADRID

As most of you know, I have been living in Madrid, Spain for the past 2.5 years, but it feels like I've known this place for longer. In fact, the first time I stepped foot in Madrid was in 2002, when I took my spring semester of my junior year of college to study abroad. Almost as soon as I moved here, I fell in love with the city as well as my adopted country. After the initial homesickness and the language barrier, I felt integrated. When came time to leave my Spanish adventure, it was a reverse-culture shock to be back in Chicago.

It would be another five years before I returned to Madrid for an extended period of time, although I had returned to Spain on several occasions for work. After four years of working for Turespaña in Chicago, I had become restless and wanted to do something more than just a desk job. Fortunately for me I had found a scholarship to study at the Escuela Diplomática in Madrid, a Master in International Relations and Diplomacy. I returned to Madrid for the second time to study in the fall of 2007, and I have been here ever since.

There is something about this city that draws people back into it. Maybe it's the people, the marcha, the food, or the constant festive atmosphere. This is the only city I've been to in which you will find droves of people barhopping at 3am, even in the pouring rain. I've found meeting people to be relatively easy; you can easily start up a conversation with someone at a bus stop and end up having dinner with them sometime during the week. Whatever it is, it was a radical change from Chicago, where however as friendly and open as Chicagoans are, they can't hold a candle to the madrileños. People here, regardless of age or wherever they're from, know how to live.

I can go on and on, but that would be too much for one article. I love this town, and when comes the time I have to leave this place, it will be a sad day for me. ¡YO SOY MADRILEÑO Y TE AMO MADRID!

www.esmadrid.com

Long overdue...

Hello my fellow readers! It's been more than six months since I last wrote an entry on this blog. Since then many things I've happened. After a short but restful and fun summer I decided after much consideration to return to Spain and do a second year as a Language Assistant (read: assistant English teacher). I have lived in three(!) separate apartments, the last one in which I finally felt like I've found my home. It's now the middle of March, and now I've found myself in the very same crossroads (both physically and mentally) as I was last year: what do I do after this summer. I have been living in Madrid for nearly three years and have grown up, learned quite a lot, made a lot of friends; in other words, I've set up roots. At the same time, I have also thought a lot of moving back to the US and start finding work in the non-profit sector, the State Department, or in international organizations. Whatever I decide, it will be a very difficult decision to make, and in either case huge adjustments will have to be made.

Part of the reason why I started this blog was to express a lot of things on my mind. They say that expressing yourself is therapeutic; if that were true, I have failed miserably. I guess one part has been laziness, but on the other hand I have this fear of actually having to face up to reality (I think we all do, at some point). Somehow I feel that if I express and share my thoughts and feelings with others, I'll have a clearer picture of what the next step would be. Then again, maybe not...

One thing's for sure, you'll be reading me a lot more. I hope you enjoy what I have to say.