Thoughts, Anxieties, Reality of a First-Time Auxiliar 2.5 Weeks Before Madrid

   I have been driving a little too fast down the highway, music echoing through my ears as I watch the sunset. The world is hues of pink, orange, and yellow and my thoughts are in a frenzy per usual.

     I thought the stress ended after I opened the envelope from the Chicago Consulate and saw the blue words “Visado España” glued to my passport: my Spanish Visa. I smiled a little, thought about the weeks and weeks of stress I had just endured to get a sticker, and hid my passport away, thinking that there is nothing in this world that I will protect more. 

     However, the stress does not end there. For me, and my natural procrastinating mind, that is where the stress truly begins. Suddenly, I think about packing, finding a storage unit, if my cat will miss me. If I will stay in touch with my friends and who will become my roommates. These questions can be overwhelming, casting doubt upon me and this whole kind of crazy situation, but somehow when I am driving, music blaring, watching the sunset I know it is all going to come together in perfect unison. 

  I have been driving a lot these days, getting lost in my thoughts and dreaming about the new streets I will be seeing outside my bedroom window. I am sure the sun will still rise, casting the warm yellow glow of morning on the walls. I am sure I will still drink coffee and listen to music, reflecting on my thoughts and the day ahead of me. I am sure I will still like hot showers and the smell of clean sheets. I am sure I will still watch the sunsets...a world away, and some things never change. 

     Isn't that the crazy thing about sunsets? They are beautiful no matter where you stand in the world. In less than a month I will not be driving down this familiar highway, meditating on change and what it will be like to live in it. I will be living in it, but I will still be able to find the sunset. 

     Metro-Detroit Michigan is the only place I have ever lived. I have dabbled with traveling, every trip leaving me starstruck for change, but this will be the first time in my life where I will be enacting that change. 

     Throughout the pandemic and many lonely days stuck inside, I thought heavily on the idea that I never really strive to improve myself from the comfort of my own home. It is so easy to get lost in the comfortability we create for ourselves. Graduating college in 2020 seemed to quite literally put a halt to my life. Suddenly it was 2021 and I had graduated almost a year ago and nothing grand had happened since the day I took off my cap and gown. It was then that I decided to throw myself headfirst out of my comfort zone and into something new. To teach, to travel, to learn a new language: three things I have always wanted to do wrapped into one. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to become as uncomfortable in change as I could muster, but to learn to grow and adapt from these changes.

     I guess that's what I mainly think about on these drives; not all that will be different, but all that will be the same. I have found that anywhere I go in the world, I tend to find a place where I feel at home. Sometimes this is listening to the sound of the wind from a park bench as people with different routines and hobbies pass me by. Sometimes this is the feel of the water as it rises and falls over my bare feet. Sometimes this is a smile cast between two strangers, creating an instant friendship. 

     I believe that home is not always the place you have lived the longest or the physical walls of a building around you. I believe home is a feeling in the heart of love, friendliness, and warmth. The bulging suitcases that I have packed and unpacked and packed again would tell you otherwise, but despite not being able to bring all the things in my life that feel like home (my cat being the hardest to part with), I know I will shortly find a new place to call home, new streets to meditate on, new people to meet and love, a new adventure to begin. 

     And if I get lonely and start to miss all those people, pets, and things I had to say “cya later” to, I can find the sunset and know that I am still at home.