Country Roads (That Do Not Take Me Home)

11/09/12

In this part of Spain, the country means marshy rice farms with little black crab guys, old crumbly-but-strong farming shacks, and long stretches of road without rushing motorbikes or smart cars or iPod-toting suits on their way to tapas at the bar.

The people out here live differently. They are followed by seagulls, apparently, not jewelry-wearing yorkies. 

Sometimes I get so wrapped in the city things, like what stop do I have to get off the metro at? or where is that club with the neon bar? or where can
I get the best chocolate croissant? That I forget that I am really from the country, too.

It's a different kind of country, for sure. But old dusty roads are old dusty roads.

I've never walked through a cornfield before. They truly have little hallways for you to meander down. Maybe we shouldn't make fun of Iowa so much... It's kind of fun. I needed a hide and seek opponent.

I still remember the feeling I had when I  looked out my airplane window and saw the beautiful blue-green of the Mediteranean Sea. Then we flew over the city and then we were on the ground, and my adventure here was just on the brink.

And I used to think that I would be a city girl when I grew up, someone who could have a cool flat with a big view of my area and take buses and have my special cafe and walk everywhere quickly and not know everyone who passes on the street. But now that I've been living in the city, the beautiful aspects of living in the country are really sticking out. 

Living abroad has really made me look at things from home in a new way and appreciate them, really. Everyone who travels will tell you that traveling makes you see your world in new colors and this is so so true.  

When I get home there will be snow on the ground and there won't be a metro system and I won't be able to walk down the street to get a fresh baguette, and my classmates will be parked at the point in their jacked up trucks and blaze orange will take the place of cardigans and I'll be able to make hot chocolate and watch un-subtitled  movies with my friends and teach my little brother to drive and it will be so cold but I will make homemade double chocolate chip cookies to eat hot from the oven. There are small things and there are big things and being away for a while makes you appreciate it all a lot more.