Our plane landed in New York to an enthusiastic round of applause. I wanted to kiss the soil. I didn't realize how much I missed home until I got here. It's a relief to walk around and talk to people without first rehearsing in my head what I am going to say to make sure I say it right. I'm going to keep up my Spanish though, every chance I get. If you don't use it, you lose it.

 

Sherri gave us a lecture about re-entry before we left Salamanca, but let me tell you, I don't think I needed it. Readjusting to life back home is one of the easiest things I've ever done, probably because I never really adjusted to life in Spain. My brother came home for his winter break a few days after I did, so being home is actually fun right now. When he leaves in early January, I will still have three weeks of vacation left, so I'm trying to see if I can get permission to live on campus during that time. No offense to my parents or anything, but I find my day-to-day life much easier when we're apart. Of course I love them; I just love them from a distance.

 

I'm happy to see my angels, of course (that means my dog and my cats, for those of you who don't know that my pets are like my children to me). Hopefully I'll be able to track down a few of my friends during the break, before we all scatter back to our respective colleges.

 

I've also made an important decision: No one has the power to make me feel bad anymore. I make myself feel bad enough as it is, I don't need negativity from anyone else to make it worse. So Mom, Dad, siblings from hell, ancient enemies from school, write this down, because it's important: I hereby strip you of all power to make me feel bad about myself. I know how to make myself happy, and I'm going to do just that. Say what you will; your words don't affect me anymore.

It's damn time to resurrect this thing. I've done quite a bit since my last entry, but I've been too lazy to write about it. I've also taken millions of photos, but I'm going to put them on Facebook and provide a link here, since the photo hosting capabilities of this website leave something to be desired.

 

A few weeks ago, I went to Galicia, which is a province in the northwest of Spain, just north of Portugal. They speak Gallego there, a dialect of Spanish, but thankfully they also speak Castillian like the rest of Spain. I would have had a lot of trouble otherwise. It rained all weekend, which is typical of Galicia, but I had a reason for going there. I went to the city of Santiago de Compostela, which has a terrific story behind it.

 

Legend has it that Santiago (Saint James, for those of you who still refer to Cristobol Colon as Christopher Columbus) found his way to the Iberian peninsula and preached there as an apostle of Jesus. After his martyrdom in Jerusalem circa 44 AD, his body was miraculously returned to the peninsula from the Middle East. The legend is a little sketchy on the details (they didn't exactly have bibliographies back then), but word has it that Santiago's remains were discovered in 835 by Theodomir, a bishop of Asturias. He claims that he was guided to the spot by a star, which is why the current symbol of Santiago is the conch shell. You know, since it looks like a star? Use your imagination.

 

Anyway, a shrine was built over Santiago's crypt. Then it was destroyed by Moors in 997, to be replaced with an impressive Gothic cathedral in the Plaza de Obradoiro. It is now the destination of more than 100,000 pilgrims a year, with four major routes from Portugal, France, southern Spain, and Africa. I made the pilgrimmage myself, only I took a bus so it doesn't count. Pilgrims wear a conch shell as a symbol of their journey, and many line up to kiss the golden shell on the altar at the front of the façade of the cathedral. In the cathedral's Chapel of the Reliquary is a gold crucifix from 874, which supposedly contains a piece of the True Cross upon which Jesus was crucified.

 

What was my point again? Oh yeah, I went there. Santiago de Compostela is now the patron saint of Spain, and he is celebrated every year on July 25.

 

Last week we had a few days off school before exams, and most students use this time to travel. I went to Paris with some friends, where we ran around like crazy for two days, trying to see everything. I think we got it all, except the Palace of Versailles, which requires an entire day by itself. The weather was typical of France, pelting rain and violent wind (I can't avoid it no matter where I go), and it was a 12-hour train ride each way, but it was worth it. Paris near Christmas time is beautiful, especially the Champs-Élysées, which is entirely lit up at night. We went to the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Pantheon, Notre Dame, Saint-Chapelle, and the Arc de Triomphe. We spent the majority of our time on the subway and standing in line, but our hostel was right near a major Metro stop, which made our lives a little easier. Thank God most French people speak English, otherwise we never would have made it. I wish I had grown up in a country that insisted on educating bilingual citizens. Damn the US, why are we so ethnocentric?

 

I got back from Paris late Saturday evening, when I promptly passed out and slept for 12 hours. I spent all of Sunday studying for finals, two of which I took this afternoon. I have one left tomorrow morning, and then the hard part of my semester is over! I'm on the home stretch. Thursday is our last day of class, and my flight back home leaves Saturday afternoon. I'm going to miss Spain, but I can't wait to go home. Looking back, this semester was quite incredible. It wasn't always a blast, but that has less to do with Spain and more to do with personal issues that continue to plague me. I've learned more than I ever could have learned in four years of Spanish class back home, and I've experienced things that I couldn't have anywhere else. This semester was certainly different, I'll give you that.

Lately I've been feeling so dissatisfied with everything, and I've been thinking about what I want from the world around me. Usually I'm so preoccupied with what I want from myself that I don't even know what I want from other people. I realized that I'm not looking for unconditional love; I'm looking for unconditional acceptance.

 

My parents are a perfect example. Of course they love me, but that provides little reassurance, because they also love my sister, who is the devil incarnate. They would love me no matter what. But would they accept me, along with all of my shortcomings, no matter what? I really don't think so. I don't say that to be malicious, that's just how I feel. Accepting me means appreciating me for what I am, not for what I could be if only I tried hard enough.

 

Could I be a straight-A student? Yes, and I have been, but I'm not always. Could I juggle a full course load, an internship, a volunteer position, and work on the student newspaper at the same time? Yes, and I have, but I can't always. Could I be thin and appear to be in total control? Yes, and I have been, but I'm not always. Sometimes I get excellent grades, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I can do a million things at once, and sometimes I can't. Sometimes I'm thin, and sometimes I'm not. It's easy for my parents to accept me when I do well, but can they accept me when I don't?

 

Can I accept myself when I don't do as well as I know I can?

 

So what do I want from the people around me? Less criticism, less pressure, less judgment...less negativity. I don't want to be reminded of my faults; I know what they are. I don't want to be told that I should do better, because I have done better in the past. I don't want to be told to keep climbing higher, to keep striving to do better. I want to be told that I can be happy right where I am, instead of always reaching for the next rung on the ladder. I want to know that I can be satisfied with what I am achieving right now, instead of always trying to achieve more.

 

I don't want to be afraid of failing. I don't want to be afraid of disappointing anyone. I can't be 100% all the time. I need to know that that's okay. It's not about living up to my parents' standards. It's not even about living up to my own standards. It's about living.

I seem to have adopted a group of Spanish intercambios from a friend in my program. At the end of October, the Escuela de Idiomas hosted a giant intercambio night, and everyone from my program went since we were all having trouble finding consistent intercambios. There were about fifty Americans, and about twice as many Spaniards, so most of us ended up in large groups. The strange thing is that I have not actually had any contact with my own group since then, but John realized that his schedule would not permit him to meet with his group twice a week like they wanted. So he asked me, Rachel, and Liz if we would mind meeting with them on Tuesday evenings, since that's when he teaches English to little Spanish monsters...I mean, 7-year-olds.

 

We agreed, and tonight we had our second meeting with them. They are nice guys: Julian, Jose-Antonio #1, and Jose-Antonio #2. Julian and Jose-Antonio #1 are both our age, and studying computer science. Jose-Antonio #2 is much older, and I don't know much about him because he only showed up to our first meeting. The first time we met, we spoke mostly in Spanish, although near the end it turned into Spaniards-speaking-English and Americans-responding-in-Spanish. This time we spoke Spanish for the first half hour and mostly English for the second half hour. I was quite relieved to discover that our Spanish is more advanced than their English, so I no longer feel stupid about asking them to speak slower because, well, they do the same thing!

 

Tonight's conversation was a bit of a struggle, since we decided to discuss politics (what with it being election day and all). That topic is complicated enough without the added strain of communicating opinions and complaints in a foreign language. Julian spent a long time trying to ask God knows what about the electoral college in Spanish, and he started laughing when we asked him to slow down for the tenth time. He stopped laughing real quick when I said "¿Quieres decirlo en ingles?" Let me tell you, he was not up to saying anything in ingles at that particular moment. But it did make him realize that what he was asking was too complicated for him to say in English, and therefore difficult for us to understand in Spanish.

 

At first I was kind of dreading the whole intercambio thing because, if nothing else, it is pretty awkward. But now I'm starting to enjoy it, and I know it's a great way to improve my Spanish. But I am glad that the whole arrangement evolved into intercambio groups, because the original idea was to be paired one-on-one with someone. I think that would be way too much for me; it's far less intimidating in a small group.

Here are some random photos taken by a webcam that I didn't know was there. Hence the blank look on my face. I was just sitting in the Internet cafe, minding my own business, and I must have pressed a button because suddenly my face appeared on my screen. Unsettling, huh?