This was a note in my phone from May 26, the day I left Spain.
"It's official. As I write this I'm on sitting on the plane from Philadelphia to St. Louis enjoying my first real Diet Coke in 5 months. And I know it's hard to believe but the "culture shock" of being back in the United States is almost even more shocking than arriving in Europe. Being surrounded by English is very, very weird. Purely American English at that. And I haven't even left the airport! So anyway, if you know how my semester's been at all you can expect that leaving this morning was one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. I absolutely promised Pedro and Asuncion that I would come back to see them, and I will hold to that promise. And the goodbyes with many of my other friends were spread out over time, because people have been gradually leaving since April. So I guess that makes it easier, but not by much. Because I'm not saying an official "goodbye" to my friends...I can always keep in touch with my international friends and the ones from across America...and I'm not saying bye to Alicante, because surely I'll come back. I'm saying goodbye to the semester and OUR Alicante experience that we will never be able to do again. But what makes it slightly okay is that I know I lived this semester to it's absolute fullest. Every single day in Alicante or traveling was spent meeting new people, challenging myself in one way or another, and just having a freaking blast. I've never felt anything like how I felt there, and whatever it was was good. So in my last post I got all emotional about my host parents, but this one goes out to my Mizzou/Alicante friends. Sometime about a month ago is when the first one of us left to go home, so naturally the night before the group of us (including French Charlie) grabbed some bottles of wine and headed to the beach specifically for a late night memory discussing/tear jerking pow wow. We popped champagne and each went around and made toasts - to Alicante, to how grateful we are for each other and the amazing friendships we created, to the semester turning out 10 times better than we could have ever imagined...we got pretty detailed and deep. To hear each one of us, especially the guys, open up about how much we all mean to each other...that was pretty awesome. It's so apparent that this semester had a huge impact on all of us in some way or another, and we can see it in each other. We've literally grown together over the past 5 months and have seen each other at our best and absolute worst moments." So that's where I stopped typing. I'll leave the "absolute worst moments" up to your imagination, but I know my crew knows what I'm talking about. So what about now? I'm back in the swing of things. People stopped asking "How was your trip?" and it's turning into a thing of the past. I use that exact quote because that's the question I got most often, and it honestly bugs the hell out of me. Which trip? My trip to Morocco or Dublin or Budapest? Certainly they can't mean Alicante, because that place was my home. To wrap up the iPhone love note, I've got three words to my Alicante friends: somos una piña. I've explained it in some post before because I think we started using it when we were in Prague. It literally means "we are a pineapple," but in Spain it's a way of saying we are all one, we're united, we're a team. Cheers to my pineapple. The semester would not have been the same without you guys.
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