After a long eight months of being away from my friends and the people I love, I am both happy and sad to say I am finally coming home. It's been quite the adventure and I can't say I would trade it for anything in the world. Though there comes a time when all you want is to go home to a place you know where your loving friends and dog are. I've been so lucky to have this wonderful experience and I'm so grateful for all the friends I've made while being away and even more grateful for the friends that stayed in touch with me while I was gone. I've been on my own for the past eight months and after a while, it's easy to fell completely alone. I have loved and I have lost many people during this journey. The hardest part is meeting someone you feel like belongs in your life just to have to say goodbye again after only a few hours, days, weeks, or months together. That's been the hardest part of it all. Saying goodbye and not knowing when or if you will ever see each other again. I've cherished every single person I've met and every insignificant moment I shared with them. This endless process of connecting with people and then losing them leaves me with a sense of loneliness and sadness. It never gets easier, even when you prepare yourself for it. I've learned a lot about myself and others during my time away. Not everyone you meet is going to be the great person you hope they will be. Some people will take advantage of you, maybe just because you're from a different country. Some people will be overly excited by you, just because you speak a different language or look a different way. Some people will ignore you just because you don't speak the same language as them. Sometimes you'll meet a person that you feel like you've been meaning to meet your whole life. Like your paths crossed for a reason and you won't want to let this person go. It will be the easiest hello and the hardest goodbye. Your heart will ache. But you won't cry because it's over, you'll smile because it happened at all. I'm not sure that I'll necessarily miss Spain, but I will definitely miss the people I spent my time with while I was there. A lot of people have been asking me if I will move back one day and right now, I don't know. I'm ready to stay in California for a while. I need some consistency in my life after so much change. Which is a strange thing for me to say because I am the most fickle person I know. I crave change every few months. So who knows, maybe after I finish school, I'll want to leave again. But right now, I need to be in California. I need to be with my dog and my friends. I wish I could gather up everyone I've ever met / loved in my life and bring them all together to one place. Like a small little community of all my favorite people in my favorite place. Maybe some day when I'm rich.
To those of you who have followed my blog since the day I left, wow thank you. I honestly made this blog for myself, so that I can look back at it one day and remember all my great memories. So to know that people actually took time out of their day to read the silly things I write makes me really happy. I guess this was one way to stay connected with me without actually putting in any effort. I can honestly say I am a bit disappointed that no one wrote me, sent me a piece of mail, anything. I barely facetimed anyone despite them saying they would facetime me. It is really hard with the time difference but I'm a night owl. I remember some people being like yeah dude I'm gonna send you something!! So I'd check my mailbox always hoping I'd find something addressed to me and I never did. (Well, my mom sent me a birthday card on my birthday when I first moved, but that's the only thing I ever got). It's not that big of a deal, but I took time out of my life to sit down and write out a postcard and send it. I always tell myself not to expect too much from people and I don't, but I thought I'd get at least like one thing in the mail. There are also some "friends" that I haven't even talked to since I've been gone. I'm just popping up 8 months later like hey what's up, yeah I've been living in Europe for 8 months. Anyway. I'm sitting in the airport in Newark just waiting for my next flight to San Diego which is some tedious shit, wish I could just teleport there. Luckily, I slept through almost the whole 8 hour flight to Newark and I had 2 seats to myself. An hour and a half till my flight leaves, 6 hours until I land in San Diego, which means still about 8 hours until I can see my doggy... UGH!!!! THE WAIT HAS BEEN SO LONG.
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Wow. 2016 was one of the best years of my life, maybe even the best year of my life (so far). Despite the fact that my grandmother died, everything else was beyond amazing. I rang in the new year of 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal with a great group of friends. I fell deeply in love with the city and the people in it. I got three new tattoos, two of which are probably my favorite ones. I got a new piercing that I love. I mended some broken friendships and created new ones. I landed an internship in Lisbon, Portugal for the summer. I lived in Lisbon for 3 months and worked for two. I met some of the most incredible people while there. I turned 21 on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I traveled through the Portuguese countryside and saw some beautiful scenery. My mom, my aunt, and my mom's best friend came to Lisbon to visit me while I lived there and we had so much fun. Traveled through even more of Portugal and I fell even more in love with the country. I witnessed Portugal win the Eurocup and celebrated with all the beautiful people of Lisbon. I moved into a cute little studio near the castle in Lisbon and wrote almost every day and took pictures with my zoom lens. I met even more amazing people while playing Pokemon Go in Lisbon. I moved to Spain by myself and cried my first 2 days there and wondered what the hell I was doing there, wished I could just go home. I'm glad I sucked it up. I found a new place to live with an older woman who rents out her house to international students. I met an amazing lifelong friend, William. We've spent almost every day together since we met. It's weird when we don't see each other or we don't talk for a day. He's my best friend and I'm so so so happy I met him. He's a great guy. I'm going to miss him so much. We went to Granada with the Erasmus Student Network and had so much fun there. It's a beautiful city and La Alhambra is just amazing. Then we traveled to Valencia together and I took him on his first pub crawl (as well as my first, well besides New Year's Eve last year, but that didn't really count, it was more like a hostel crawl). As always, we enjoyed each other's company so much and never got tired of each other. He made a Thanksgiving meal for him and our friends at his apartment. We've spent every Thursday together going to get 2 for 1 burgers at a burger place in town. I didn't see him for the past 2 weeks because we were both traveling, but then we were both in Barcelona at the same time and I was so happy to see him!! He met my mom and we all had dinner together. Now I'm going to have to say goodbye and I might cry, but I know I will see him again, I just don't know when. My family came to Paris for Christmas and I got to fly there from Murcia to spend Christmas with them. I went in the Eiffel Tower, all the way to the top! I ice skated IN the Eiffel Tower with my sister and stepsister, so much fun. We went to the Palace of Versailles which is quite beautiful. The gardens are amazing. My mom and step dad didn't want to go because the ground was muddy, so my sister, step sister, and I went and frolicked around for like 30 minutes. I swear I've never bonded with them more than I did this trip. After Paris, we went to Madrid then took a train to Toledo which is a small city south of Madrid. So cute and beautiful, up in the mountains. From there, we went to Sevilla which wasn't that exciting. But we rented a car during one of our days there and had the best day ever. We drove to Ronda which is a small town in the mountains, then we drove through the mountains down this curvy little road to the Rock of Gibraltar. Coolest experience ever. It's actually not part of Spanish territoty, it belongs to the United Kingdom so we got to get our passports stamped! We went to the top of the rock in a cable car and there's a bunch of monkeys there. I was hanging out with a bunch of monkeys! It was wild and sooooo cool. I got some amazing photos (I really need to update my Flickr). We were all tired on the ride home and extremely hungry, so I played Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and we turned it all the way up and all sang along. I swear I've never had that much fun with all of them in the past 16 years that my mom and stepdad have been together. I also told them the truth that I had picked up smoking cigarettes again, so I could go smoke every now and then and not have to quit cold turkey. I only smoked one or two a day, so now I think I'll be able to quit for real when I get back to the states. After Sevilla, we went to Barcelona and spent New Year's Eve together. It was kind of lame considering they didn't have a countdown haha, but fun nonetheless. Then they left and I already miss them. The month of December was one of my favorites of the year. I've had such an amazing life during 2016. I couldn't have asked for anything more. I met so many great people, I traveled to a bunch of new places, and I spent time with my family. Now it's 2017 and I'm going to graduate college! I can't wait to see what this year brings me. Cheers to 2016.
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Maddie Lang
Dreamer. Adventurer. Wallflower. Lover. Fighter. Kentuckian / Californian. Finding my purpose in the world. Archives
February 2020
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