Where to Begin...

It has been about a month and a half, though it feels like a year. Life is filled with ups and downs. Real growth occurs when one has departed his or her comfort zone. Keep your head held high. You have egg on your face. Take all challenges in stride. Expect the unexpected. Imagine every relevant colloquial cliché – it feels as though I´ve murmured them all to myself within this past month and a half; some more than others.

I appreciate a consolidated blog post: that which takes a complicated subject and condenses it to a perfectly organized story. The writer is a well-oiled machine, able to consolidate a flurry of emotions and memories into a seemingly flawless product. But as I sit here, procrastinating my dive into an entry with actual substance, I find myself at a loss for words. I want to discuss the inspirational moments within my primary school here in a Madrid suburb. I want to discuss the excitement of being a real adult in a city I once studied abroad in. I want to discuss the many people I´ve met, and the relationships back home I´ve had to rely on. Conversely, I want to discuss the relationships I´ve already broken, alongside the year´s-worth of hardships I´ve endured, within a span of one month. I want to try and give life to those often undervalued clichés.

But I have only just begun my journey. I will not pretend to be a dictionary full of lessons just yet. So I leave this initial entry vacant of specific stories and memories, and hope to instead use it as an introductory post, and a reminder to myself that most all topics are on limits. I´m unsure of what my next 10 ½ months will bring, nor am I sure how my perspective will change.  I suppose that therein lies my only sense of certainty: one can never be prepared for the high and low points that accompany an international move. Hopefully though, I will always surprise myself, for better or for worse.