FINAL DAYS IN SEVILLA

These past two weeks have been insanity. When I first arrived, the thought of spending three months abroad seemed so daunting. What was I going to do with all that time? Then suddenly it felt like no time. Not enough time with my host family, with my new friends, or with this city.

While there are a few things I won’t miss very much (getting about 6 hours of sleep a night because of the schedule here, being sick on and off for three months straight, having to hear Despacito at least 3x a day) those are greatly outweighed by the things I will miss.

My host mom and I have grown really close and I’m going to miss her a lot. I’m going to miss sitting with her in the living room, each doing our work, while drinking tea and eating tortas de aceite. I’m going to miss watching La Voz Kids with my host family* after dinner, my host brother making funny side comments.

When I first arrived I was worried I wouldn’t make any friends but now I have a whole network of friends across the US, Spain and the rest of Europe. After the program I’m visiting a friend who lives in Berlin, Germany that I met at the language school in Sevilla. It’s crazy to think a month after meeting my friend Molly we decided to go on a week-long trip together. We’ve grown so close that after the program ends, and I travel around Eastern Europe for a few weeks with my grandmother, I’m flying to Los Angeles to hang out with her for a week before going back home to the Bay Area. Funny enough she will be the first person I see back in the US, not my parents. I’m going to miss sitting at the same table at the same bar with all my friends, eating free potato chips because the bartender knows us all by now. I’m going to miss sitting by the Guadalquivir river with Molly, drinking hot chocolate and watching the rowers go by, gossiping about whatever went down at the club last night.

I’ll even miss going to Spanish class every day. I had a really amazing teacher who made class really fun. Everything she taught us seemed incredibly useful and valuable. I’ve never before felt that I was in class because I wanted to learn not because of a responsibility to be there.

I’m really glad that I came to Sevilla and it has been an experience that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

*During my time in Sevilla I switched host families because my first host family and I were incompatible. I liked them I just couldn’t live with them. I say this not to scare not to scare people, quite the opposite: it took about 5 minutes of paperwork to switch host families. CIEE dealt with it really well and the whole process was very easy. I love my new host family and all of my friends absolutely love their host families as well!