leaving the party

(my last night in Spain my friends asked me to carve my name in a tree in their neighborhood...)

I have been at home for a week now. It has been soooo good to be at home and rest and be with my family. ALthough this time is kind of weird. I miss my daily life in Granada and my friends. But I am thankful for how well we've been able to keep in touch. I think about them a lot.

Memphis heat is different than Granada heat. It is humid, so I've had to run reeealllly early here. But it is nice, i get to watch the sun rise over a lake that I run around :) I still run with the watch I used in Spain to run and I haven't changed the hour yet, so at 7:30am here it is 2:30pm there. My watch says 2:30 as I finish my runs. I think about them all getting ready to sit down and eat a big lunch and for me, the sun is still rising.

I wonder what my friends would think of my life here... I wonder what they would think of huge parking lots, and huge churches and huge houses? I wonder how they'd re-act? I wonder what they would think of driving everywhere. I wonder... I miss them, I wish they were here with me... especially to meet all my friends here. My dad said if they came, he would treat them like they were his own children, because they loved me so well while I was in Spain.

I have never met a group of people or a culture that LOVES the party as much as these people, especially my Spanish friends. But their values in life shines through their love for the party.... Being together and enjoying life. I feel like I just left a great, huge, fun, wild, colorful, big, long party... where I was loved well.

My last night in Spain one of my friends said, "Molly I hope you know that you have left a foot print on our lives." For that I am thankful. They have certainly left one on mine. Also a beautiful kind of full circle moment for me was when I read a note that my friends had written to me before I left. A year ago, one of my closest friends there told me she didn't believe in God or that we have souls... SO I found it profound that in her letter to me it said, "Thank you for being who you are and for giving so much joy to our lives. You are unique. We will always be with you. You are the soul of the party... you are our favorite girl."

last day in spain

Last night was soooooo HARD. I had to hug and kiss my friends for the last time. I got to tell them that they have changed my life. I got to tell them that they have taught me so much about the world and about friendship. We told each other how much we loved each other, we hugged a lot and for a long time, we cried and we gave each other gifts.

I spent this entire week and weekend pretty much non stop with my friends, we spent a lot of time talking about our memories and looking at pictures and just being together trying not to think about the fact that it really is the end... that this moment really has come, that today is really my last day in Spain, that I really can't just go over to their house and eat lunch with them or go out on a Saturday night to tapas with them.

I will never forget these people or what I have learned from them. But I leave now knowing that I have loved... I have loved deeply and passionately this year and a half and that I have been well-loved by God and the friends He's poured into my life.

And I am overwhelmed with the pain of leaving and gratitude for what this has been.

Now I go home, HOME!!!

on goodbyes

(the 2 bottom pictures are from this weekend, right before I said good bye to my friend in the middle, before she left to go to London)

This is hard. I am in the last 2 weeks of my life here in Spain and my heart literally aches when I think about saying good bye to friends and places here.

Saturday I went to Loja for the last time. Loja is the hometown of the three girls I lived with when I first moved here. Thru out this year and a half I have been there about 7 times. I have gotten to meet all of my friends’ friends and families there and experience many holidays there. This weekend I said goodbye to their familes, I said goodbye to the place.

Last April I wrote a blog about one of my friend’s grandmother who lives there (you should read it bc its really funny). We met my first time in Loja which was when I couldn’t speak any Spanish. She is blind and has a hard time hearing. But my friend told me that every weekend her grandmother asks about me. She wanted to hear my Spanish because she didn’t believe my friend when she told her that I speak well now. So the other night I saw her again, a year and a half later. I sat with her grandmother on the patio and talked, more like yelled as I was sitting right in front of her face. She was hilarious, her biggest worry was that no one in my country would understand me when I get back and speak Spanish to them, I told her many times that I planned on speaking with the people in my country in English. She couldn’t quite grasp that. She asked me, “What is “pan” in English? I said, “bread.” She said, “oh how difficult! I could never say that.” Hahah but I made her try, and she got it out after us all yelling “bread, bread, bread” to her. I said, “look grandma, you speak English now!” She just laughed and said, “look how good her Spanish is.” It was so cute, I laughed a lot with her as we had our yelling conversation in Spanish on a patio in Loja.

When I said goodbye to my other friends family, I told her dad that I always think of him every time I used the word, “trunk” in Spanish because he is the one who taught that word to me. I reminded him of night after my friends graduation in Granada her parents invited me to Loja and I told them I didn’t think there was enough space in the car and he said, “that’s okay Molly, we’ll just put you in the trunk!”

Every time I start to think about the things I want to tell my friends what all they have taught me about the world, God and life, every time I start to think of my last moments with my friends here I start to feel such a mixture of the pain of leaving and gratitude for what this has been.

It doesn’t help that I am especially sentimental about these kind of things. Like how hard it was for me to leave my college because I knew a stage of life was over. Now another stage of life is coming to a close, except it is harder because this place is not just a drive a way, it is on the other side of the world. But at least I can take something with me, I can take what these people have taught me about love and life back home.