A Year Ends. A New One Begins. (How to find grit in the face of trying experiences)

Authored By:

Zoe H.

A year ends. A new one begins. In the spirit of the new year, I want to leave behind old perspectives, and write to you from where I am today.

Recently a few friends congratulated me on making the leap and taking the chance on "living the dream." Rather than sell you a romanticized vision of leaving everything behind and changing your life this year, I want to temper that vision. I want to tell you that while I am proud of this huge achievement, there was a lot of failure and hardship involved in coming here and life was anything but a bed of roses when I first got here. I originally had a post that was essentially a comprehensive list of everything that went wrong since I got here. Rather than dwell on every detail as originally planned here is a quick list of a few of these things that took place my first two weeks here.

  • Bad airbnb situations
  • Unscheduled period :( (all my period supplies were in my suitcase)
  • Worst time of year for housing climate
  • Key getting stuck in lock, having to pay half of said lock
  • Getting terribly sick and losing my voice for several weeks, contracting diarrhea simultaneously on the first day
  • Several housing situations falling through while running out of time at my airbnb
  • Damaging my laptop
  • Police refusing to take my fingerprints at my TIE appointment, because they informed me I needed my empadronamiento first (something I was previously told was hardly ever needed. I was the only one in my program I knew who had to go through this additional step)

Within my first nine days in Madrid, I already seriously was considering packing my bags and coming home. I had a nightmare about everything in Spain burning  around me, and that I needed to buy an insurance for an emergency flight back to the US. I had no business working as an auxiliar here (I hadn't even started working at my schools yet, so I knew this was a fear-based thought invading my nightmare). In the nightmare, my mind told me that I should just go home to the United States and figure out my career. I told my mother about the nightmare, and she even got approval from my father to come home. In the first nine days, it felt safer to fail and come home, before I commited myself to a regrettable lease. But something sat uncomfortably at the back of my mind. How could I quit before I even started? Before I even had the chance to test my abilities as an auxiliar, the chance to grow? In spite of the chaos around me, the "signs" that seemed to indicate I should quit, I saw something more. I saw these challenges as a test. How badly did I want this? How badly did I want to make it here, to prove myself, to start a new life? 

Previously, I fought so hard to come here to Madrid, because I thought once I got here, I would end up in Oz, "somewhere over the rainbow," just like Dorothy. In reality, in coming here, I've had to prove my resolve more than ever. I dealt with so many trying and deterring experiences my first few months here, that I've run out of fingers to count them on. What I realized is that it's okay, life is never going to be perfect. It's never going to stop throwing curveballs at you. But you get to choose what to make of it. You may decide to come to Spain, and have a hard time. You might not be able to post inspiring Instagram photos and stories about sipping sangria and being "hugged" or embraced by Madrid (I certainly wasn't). But you can grind your teeth, ride out the tough wave, and find you have created a meaningful experience with true friends along the way, and discovered yourself as a person and a teacher. You may find you are capable of far more than you had ever imagined before.