The Adventures of My Childhood Frog-Creature in Madrid and Beyond
Travel can be an incredibly fulfilling and life-changing experience, but at times can also be a lonely one. Luckily for me, I have been accompanied on my travels by Yolanda the Yellow-Bellied Quail Frog. Yolanda is a sort of frog-like monster with stripes and spots and red-painted toenails who has been to more countries than I have. When I was very small, my father would leave on two-week business trips to countries on the other side of the world. In his fancy business bags would be Yolanda, to be carried to his meetings and events. Pictures of Yolanda with suited Beijing engineers or perched on the wing of an airplane would be sent back home, to my delight.
Yolanda is here now, with me in Madrid, Spain. As I write this she is sat on my dorm-room desk, leaning on my reading light. Though this is both her and my second trip to Spain, I have little to no evidence of her first visit. My first trip was a high school exchange program, when I was fifteen and could barely remember the imperfect or preterite conjugations, much less tell the difference between the two. I packed Yolanda in my carry on with grand intentions of taking photos with her at every monument or museum we saw, but I did not follow through. I was embarrassed! Fifteen-year-old Emma was worried that her fellow exchange students would think she was weird for bringing a little stuffed toy on her big, adult Europe trip.
On this trip, however, slightly matured 20-year-old Emma is now aware that stuffed animals are awesome and anyone who thinks otherwise is being silly. Yolanda has proudly ridden through museums, stadiums, and historical cities in my purse. My iPhone storage is groaning under the weight of all the Yolanda pictures I have taken at sites all over this country; every single one of which has been sent back to my family in the US. I finally understand what it is like to be on the other side of a Yolanda message. Each time I see something incredible here, like a flamenco show or a thousand year old aqueduct, I think to myself “This is amazing—but it would be even better with my family here.” In sending these pictures, I am not simply showing my loved ones the wonderful places I have been. Yolanda lets me say, “”Look, I am here, and I brought a piece of you with me.”
