there's no place like home

I’m sitting here on my bed listening to my señora wash the dishes from lunch and to the strains of her granddaughter playing quietly in the other room. My window is open to let in the breeze and the bird songs, and if I’m lucky, no huge moths or flies will decide to enter. The day is warm, but the apartment is comfortable, an oasis from the blazing heat on the concrete outside. The city is resting from a long week of partying; this afternoon there are no yells from the rides of the fair that was down the street and no smell of churros being fried. Tomorrow, the stores will be open normal hours and everyone will get back to work. Día del trabajador is strategically placed on the first of May and on a Monday, because out of the 30 days this April, approximately ten of them were normal work and school days (and that’s not counting the days my university professors decided not to show up for class). The rest of the days were holidays, weekends, festivals, or fiestas during which the stores were not open and the whole city plus thousands of tourists were out on the town, watching parades, bullfights, riding roller coasters, or simply being Spaniards and spending long hours drinking and eating at cafes.

I feel strangely at home. It’s the atmosphere. It’s the comfort. As my dad said last night, Spain has ceased being a novelty, but after all the homesickness I’ve been feeling in the past few weeks, it’s also become somewhat of a home without my realizing it. I had a long talk with my señora this afternoon about the importance of family, about relationships between parents and kids, about raising kids. The conversation began when I mentioned that I really liked the word “embarazisima,” which was used on T.V. to describe a “very pregnant” woman. We decided that I’m of course way too young to be or to aspire to be embarazisima, but she was three times and it changed her life forever, as kids will do. And though I’ve only known her for four months and I hate when she doesn’t understand me and that she feeds me too much, my señora’s become somewhat of a madre as well. When my mom was here to visit she told her (in Spanish of course), that I’m half Spanish because I have a Spanish mother here in Sevilla. Que suerte tengo.


(that's before I cut my hair)