1% day

I don´t know what it is that makes me feel like I just want to go home sometimes. 99% of the time I am happy to be here experiencing new things and meeting new people, but there is that 1% of the time that I just miss everything that is familiar. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss my school, I miss my professors, I miss driving my car, I miss AIM... Today, for some reason, is one of those days.

This morning I woke up in no mood to speak or even hear any Spanish, which is pretty ridiculous considering I live in Spain. BUT, I didn´t want to talk to my host parents or go to class and listen to my professors or do anything that required stretching myself. I think that is the real problem.. I have always struggled with change and clung to anything familiar. Here, it isn´t really possible not to change. Whether I want to or not, I have to think in Spanish to be able to communicate with the people I live with. I have been stretching myself since the moment I left my family at the security gates in the Detroit airport. I had to fly here alone, which is the first time I´ve ever flown alone in my life. Then, I had to find all of the BCA students in the airport in Paris and try to make friends with them since I am the only MC student in Barcelona this semester. Then, I had to start the Spanish part of living here, which has obviously been a constant stretching of myself. I know all of these things are helping me to grow, and for the most part I look at the positively. But sometimes it is hard. It is hard to deal with your grandpa´s death alone without the rest of your family. It is hard to listen to all the other groups of students from the same schools talk about people from back home that they all know when you can´t talk about people from your own school. It is hard to feel like you are a member of a family just because you have a room in their apartment and eat dinner with them every day. It is hard to get news about what is going on at home and to realize how much you are missing...

Meanwhile, I want to be here or else I could change it, couldn´t I? Or am I just doing this to prove something? To prove it to myself.. or my family.. or my friends.. or my professors? No, I am the one who decided to come, and I am the one who wants to stay. I´ll just have to live with the 1% of the time that I want to run back to my comfortable life in Indiana knowing that you will all be there for me when I return...