Anticipation and Expectation

Recognizing my feelings before I travel to Europe.

“And then I realized adventure was the best way to learn” – Unknown

Five things I am most looking forward to:

There are so many things for me to be excited about I had to narrow it down to my top five. First in foremost, I am excited to travel! After so many months of isolation and canceled trips from COVID-19, I'm thrilled to make up for the lost travel time. Second, I am excited to live a different way of life. From eating different foods to learning new manners, I am eager to see it all. Third, I am looking forward to learning a new language, they say learning a new language can make you a better person. Fourth is an easy one, meeting new friends with the same passion as me. As iron sharpens iron I am hopeful that my new friends abroad will sharpen my knowledge. Lastly, I am excited to learn the history of Spain. Spain fosters so many historical places my inner history nerd is freaking out.

Five things I am currently worried about:

With COVID-19 still in the air, it is hard to not be scared of the virus. Scared of it canceling my trip to Spain, scared of it affecting my health abroad, scared of it canceling my internship, etc... Naturally, I am also scared of not being able to understand Spanish in Spain. Spaniards have what some would say a lisp to their pronunciation which is hard to understand if you have never it before. Additionally, I am worried about how I am going to keep in contact with my friends and my family. With the +7 hour time difference and new international phone number, it is hard to stay in contact with friends and families. On a more light note, I am afraid I am not going to pack all the right things. How am I supposed to pack my whole life in two suitcases?! But in the end, I am most worried about not fitting in. You don't exactly see a bunch of bright blonde hair blue-eyed girls in Spain but I hope they still treat me well.

Five things I will miss the most:

Immediately I think I will miss my bed the most, but on a more serious note, I will miss my family. In Texas, I had the opportunity to go home if I needed a break or a shoulder to lean on, but here I will not be able to have that luxury. I will miss not having to struggle to form a sentence in a different language and miss being able to understand everyone so easily. But most of all, as cheesy as it sounds, I will miss Blake very much. He is quite literally the sunshine to my day, he always knows how to cheer me up. Long-distance is hard and adding a time difference makes it even harder.

Five things I won't miss:

Truly, I am excited to say I will not miss having to eat fast food every day as a broke college student. I am excited to be fed tasty meals cooked everyday day by my future host mom. As sad as it sounds, I will also not miss the smell of Lubbock. Smelling cow manure in the wind every so often is not exactly living the dream. I definitely will not miss having to do my laundry either. I can thank my wonderful host mom for being so kind as to do my laundry (I heard she'll even fold it too!). I absolutely hate the cold therefore, I will not be missing the Lubbock snow either. Lastly, don't tell my parents, but I will not miss the drinking age of the United States. I am now legal in Spain!

My greatest single challenge overseas will be...

understanding every day how fortunate I am to be abroad.

As Andy Bernard says, "I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them." It is so easy to take this opportunity for granted, to be sad about being away from home and getting caught up in missing my friends, my family, and the easy way of life. But time will fly by and I hope that in the meantime I take everything in while thanking God for the great opportunity I was blessed with.