As I study for exams on this beautiful spring morning in my favorite café in Salamanca, I am forced to come to terms with the fact that my time in Europe is coming to an end. I started off the semester considering Salamanca merely a place I would vacation for a bit, but somewhere along the way, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when, it became home. Among the immense smorgasbord of emotions that I am experiencing (sadness about leaving, excitement about seeing my friends and family, stressed about packing, grateful for the places I’ve been, disappointed about the places I couldn’t work into my schedule), I am anxious about where I go from here. I have learned more in these four months than I have in my previous two decades. How do I take these new discoveries about the world and about myself with me, back to the life I put on pause back at home? What if my friends and family do not welcome the changes that I have made? What if I miss my life in Spain so much that home, once my favorite place in the world, dulls in comparison? I will conclude with a quote by Azar Nafizi that perfectly sums up my current state of mind:
“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and place because you’ll never be this way ever again.”
