¡¿Cuántos días faltan?!

As my countdown for leaving to fly back across the pond gets smaller and smaller (less than 40 days!!), I continue getting more anxious and excited to get on that plane. My tickets are bought, visa paperwork is processing, and September 1st I fly out to NYC. Then, three short days later I´ll be boarding the red-eye for Madrid!

After a 2 month vacation of travels around the NW and Alaska, I´m finally back to work at two temporary jobs for my university and it´s a great distraction from thinking about Spain and everything I need to do before I leave los Estados Unidos.

Sitting at my desk today, I couldn´t stop thinking about what is driving me to leave America for the next few years and whether I had even thought much into the negatives of the situation? Being the list-maker I am, I started writing the whys and why nots of this whole endeavor. Of course there were only about three reasons to stay: actually finishing my degree on campus, being closer to my family and friends (and not miss the million weddings in the next two years, though I am bummed I might miss my bestie´s...), and well, saving money.

But then I started making a list of why I am actually going, and was ready to hop on a plane before I even got through the second bullet point.

• Another new adventure, pretty much self explanatory. I have trouble with routine and doing the same old thing for very long. I can´t wait to spice things up again.
  
• Language Benefits. I think everyone should experience what it is like to be in an environment where most people don´t speak your native language. It has changed my whole outlook on communicating, and I´ve gained the advantage of being nearly bilingual. Another year in Spain and I will be! Plus, living in Europe there are so many opportunities to pick up other languages with a little effort.
• Spain´s lifestyle. I could go on for a long time about this one. The social-ness, the walking rather than driving, tapas y cerveza, mañana attitude, late lunch, different foods, amazing night life, siesta, etc., etc.
  
• My teaching job! Working in a bilingual high school in Southern Spain is surely going to be interesting- especially since I´ll be working with math and technology classes taught completely in English to Spanish teens. I´m very excited to see how the job goes and to meet all my co-workers and students.
  
• Good weather, living near the beach. Why not? I used to get S.A.D. pretty bad in Alaska, and year round light and plenty of sunshine are definitely a good way to avoid that.
• Meeting more and more people, and probably some very interesting characters. And getting to spend more time with my great friends in Sevilla. I have missed them very much this past year.

And oh the list went on and on.
I cannot wait to see what Huelva has in store for me. ¡Hasta pronto, España!

The most exciting letter ever.

By some miracle a letter sent from southern Spain on June 16 arrived to my PO Box in Pullman this morning. For 7 longggg months I had been waiting for this letter, and could not believe it finally had arrived. When I tore open that envelope with my destiny awaiting I saw the bold words: Cartaya (Huelva), Spain. To me this was very good news, the best of both worlds: getting to live near the beach, but also being less than an hour from Sevilla, one of my most favorite cities in the world and where I studied in 2009. I ran out to the parking lot and called a friend, half yelling, almost crying, and letting it sink it that I´m really moving back to Spain in 74 days. Oooooh what a feeling. To top off my day, Julia, a friend who´s also doing the program, finally called me this afternoon and said she was placed in Sevilla. No puede ser.

Anywho, Huelva is a small city of almost 150,000 on the Atlantic coast. Even though it´s not exactly the most beautiful of Spanish cities, it definitely has some amazing beaches, low cost of living, and most importantly, it´s Spain!!! (And very near the Portugal border!) I´ll be working in a high school in one of the whitewashed pueblos outside of Huelva called Cartaya, less than a half hour commute. I´m really stoked to be able to integrate more into Spanish life too since Huelva doesn´t seem to be a big touristy destination. I can´t wait to continue improving my Spanish, maybe take on German (or French, or Portuguese!), and forget words in English all over again.

Julia:"Today is more exciting than the day I got into college."
True that...

The journey to get back.

During Spring of ´09, I decided to go to Spain and study for a semester, just for kicks, without the slightest idea that I´d really love it and that the experience of leaving my comfort zone would change my life so much. But, here I am nearly a year after my return to the States preparing all my documents so that I can get my long term Spanish visa and head over in September to start my new job!

Last Fall after a month or two of googling and researching how to legally move back to Spain for awhile, I ran across a program through the actual Spanish government that hires North Americans every year to work as language and culture assistants in their Spanish-English bilingual schools. The job almost sounded too good to be true, work only 12-16 hours per week, earn a monthly salary, free medical, and get a long stay visa residence card to be a legal human being in Spain. But as it turns out, this program is legit and I have been accepted to work in Andalucia- though I may be waiting and checking my PO Box every day til July so that I can know the actual school I´ll be working in. Besides that, the only thing that stands between me now is a load of bureaucratic fun: background checks, medical releases, visa apps, and maybe even a road trip to San Francisco to visit my "local" Spanish Consulate. Anyone up for a 16 hour drive??

Soo, I haven´t quite finished my degree yet, but I have the benefit of WSU´s online program, so I will be finishing my BA part time while working in Spain. I should finish up in another few semesters with a Bachelor´s in Business Management and Ops with minors in Mathematics and Spanish. Oh yes. I have some ideas as to what I might do for a career and with my life later on, but I don´t believe in planning too far ahead...you never know where the road might take you. I just know I like the road I´m strolling down at this moment- I think one of my biggest fears is graduating college, entering corporate America, and then having a hard core midlife crisis before I´m 30, which would probably lead me to do the Camino de Santiago and hike 100s of miles by myself again.. I´d rather just do that for fun.