Mezcla de Sentimientos - Mixed Feelings

Two weeks from today, my program ends and we all go our separate ways. I am at the point where I can confidently say, I’m gonna make it. I never imagined that homesickness could persist so completely for such a long period of time. More than homesickness, it is peoplesickness – I am homesick for the people that I love. At the same time, it will be hard leaving Sevilla. After dancing around each other cautiously for so long, I feel like we are finally getting to know each other. I am content sitting for hours by the rio or in a café, a contentment that I never feel when I try to go read or write at Borders or something. When men call me “guapa,” I am learning to take it as a compliment, one that I will miss, because flattery is never quite so blatant and appreciative in the US. The smiles on the street that I have been giving since the beginning of the semester but never seen reciprocated seem to be returned more and more these days. I have learned to appreciate a good drink, a cold tinto or cerveza (even if it’s cruzcampo) or a café cortado and have learned the value of making it last and enoying it. I love the mornings here, before the heat of the day sets in, and am making new efforts at getting myself up and out to enjoy them. Not much luck yet, but hopefully I can make it a new habit.
With two weeks to go, a sense of urgency is setting in. The comments have started: this may be the last time I’ll go here, see this, eat this. The tourist spots that we haven’t yet seen are becoming a priority in our schedules over class and homework. We are silently starting to accumulate the gifts and souvenirs for loved ones that we had the whole semester to buy, but of course did not. Exotic trips that we planned at the beginning of the semester, which we felt like would never actually happen, have come and gone. It is hard to take things one day at a time when the knowledge that there are so few creates a sort of pressure. But I have been feeling this pressure all semester, and I have learned that I have to actively suppress it if I am going to be able to enjoy myself at all, rather than haphazardly try to get a complete taste of Sevilla. It is this sense of pressure that makes me think most I could have benefited from spending a year here. If I had my way, I wouldn’t have even booked a return flight until probably a week or so ago. I believe that having the date “May 15” in my head all semester has tainted it a little, and it’s a shame. Four months is a long time, but it is just enough time to do all that needs to be done. The knowledge that any wasted second is a waste of a one-time opportunity has made me immensely self-critical every time I take a night off, have a conversation in English rather than Spanish. But it is that mentality that had me run-down and frustrated within a month of starting my program, so I am now actively working to shut it up.