Epilogue

I'm back. I got my last meal in Spain--Gazpacho and fries at Mcdonalds--and flew over. I have since: gotten beer and hot wings at Smokeeaters, stopped by Berkeley, eaten more spicy food, not gotten kicked out of Plainfield, eaten a Pluto's salad, gone to Trader Joe's, wandered around Davis...seen old friends and met new ones. The last eight months already feel like a dream. I search for stories.. few songs, pictures, people.. well, it was pretty vivid but when I woke up I forgot.

In between, I traveled to Edinburgh, St Andrews, Dublin, [bus tour through the Wicklow Mountains, through the ruins of the Glendalough monastery and Kilkenny], Lisbon, and Sintra. All wonderful.

I have no culture shock, aside from silly details. Billboards, for instance, took me by surprise--their density, their loudness, their ubiquity as we flew over the highway when landing in Chicago. That English is all around--call it obvious, but in Granada, if I heard a snippet of English (which happened frequently enough) I'd turn around to see the speaker. And that American English sounds so ugly. But it's nothing serious. I'm happy to be home.

When people ask how it was, my answer depends on how long I feel like talking about it. My default is, of course, "It was awesome." That's a lie, but a convenient one. And if I have some time to tell the story, I delve into differences between Spanish and American attitudes to work and stress and how I am so much more compatible with the American model of responsibility and rigor. How school sucked, traveling was generally awesome, although going solo wasn't my cuppa, that the distance in the relationship was hard, how the Spanish party schedule was out of control and way more than I can handle. My roommates. And then, if they're still listening, I start talking about the walls, the colors, the crumbling white paint, the kitties...

Readers, thank you for reading. I hope my rants were tolerable and that my more substantial posts were enjoyable.

The end!