Oh dear. What a terrible job I've done keeping up with this thing. Over a year has passed since my last post (whoops!) and a whoooole lot has happened. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

I celebrated San Isidro to get my mind off of sad news from back home.
Leigh came to visit me!
Jessie & Kimmy came to visit and it was like we hadn't missed a day!
I took advantage of Torrejón fiestas and went to visit Liz in Logroño. We ate loads of pinchos, visited a winery, and I day-tripped to Pamplona.
I had to face saying goodbye to my niños at Vicente Aleixandre. It was way more difficult than I expected, and I knew it would be tough. Imagine the shock and awe when I revealed to them that I spoke Spanish!
Megan came to visit during the Eurocup and joined me & my profes on our trip to Ávila.
I went back to Uclés and it was somehow better than the first year.
I was in Madrid for my birthday and it was the best birthday of my life.
I boarded a one-way flight to Chicago on August 8th, 2012.

The night before my flight back to the U.S., I met some friends who were still in town for a quick goodbye dinner and some drinks, and I held it together. Then, on the metro an adorable old chulapo couple boarded and sat across from me and I couldn't fight the urge to talk to them. I told them about how I'd fallen in love with the city I'd only lived in for two years and that it was my last night in town (their response: "la última noche ya?? quédate aquí hija!") and they offered to adopt me. Unfortunately I had to decline (Spanish bureaucracy isn't exactly overnight efficient when it comes to paperwork) but I did ask them for a photo to commemorate the moment:

I got back to my apartment to finish packing up my stuff and that was when I lost it. Fortunately I had Mirita and little baby kitten (who at the time didn't have a name, I just called her Peque) to keep me on my toes and snuggle with me through a very sad, sleepless night.

Since August, I have had a pretty wild Russian mountain of emotions. My mom moved our lives back to Illinois and had to deal with a pretty terrible moving/home-buying process. We didn't actually get into our new house until September, at which point I took off to Raleigh for Hopscotch 3 and had a blast as usual. Then I came back to IL and started a part-time Spanish teaching job that was pretty disappointing after two years of super engaged students. Then I found my current job about six months later. A few months after that (last night in fact), I signed a lease for an apartment in Chicago.

The worst part of it all hasn't been leaving Madrid. As much as I love that city and the people I knew/know there and as hard as it was to leave, it did eventually get better and I did eventually stop having constant dreams in Spanish about people and places I left behind. The worst part has been trying to start over without a job or any friends. I know things could have ended up a lot worse, so I don't want to whine too much, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't a very, very rough transition into jobless friendless life.

That's all over now. I think.

In July 2009, I went to Rome on a whim to occupy five days after my study program/before my return flight to NC. I happened to be there during free day at the Vatican, so I took advantage of that and shuffled my way through it before getting spit back out into St. Peter's Square, which for some reason was packed full of people holding signs and cheering. I had read that the Pope didn't stay at his residence in the Vatican during the summer so it really never crossed my mind to even try attending the Pope's address while in town... but suddenly there I was, face-to-face with a huge crowd gathered to hear somebody's voice booming over the PA system and bouncing off the columns. I searched the crowd for a moment, dazed. What were they doing here? Did they really gather just to hear a recording of the Pope? Just then, a quote from the movie Amélie popped into my head - Quand le doigt montre le ciel, l' imbécile regarde le doigt/When the finger points to the sky, the fool looks at the finger. Finally I looked up at what the crowd saw and caught a glimpse of the Pope, just as he was finishing his address and retreating back into his apartment.

The point of this anecdote is that since then, I have tried so hard to always remember to look up, I suppose both figuratively and literally. "Always look up" has been my #1 advice to nearly everyone who has asked me for advice about a particular place I've visited or traveling in general. So, now that I've had this whirlwind year of being back in the States, I need to remind myself to heed my own advice. Keep looking up.