June. That's tomorrow. What does that mean? No more school in the afternoon, now we only have from 830 - 200 every day. Final tests of the year (not finals, just my last 3 tests), warm weather, summer, schools out, fiestas, birthdays... Oh, and my last month. Its not time to reflect yet, Im still in my anteanteantepenultimate (5th to last) week, and after talking about it with my host dad I realized Id be so much better following his advice- until now I've been doing "vida normal," I settled in here a long time ago and by now I can get through my morning routine with my eyes closed. It feels like I've been living here all my life (most of the time), so why should I act or think any differently now?
I was going through a bit of an end-of-exchange crisis, but slowly I've pushed myself away from those thoughts (as a journalist once said "dont worry, or worry, but know that worrying is about as useful as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum") and I feel like a certain calmness has set over me. But this calmness wasnt something I lost because of the anxiety and the proximity of my flight date, it actually dissapeared a few months ago (between February and April, sometime) and after a week of complete stress (two projects that had to get done, a test to study for about a topic we barely had time to cover in class in spanish that I knew everything about but screwed up on the test, and a latin quiz about pronouns which I only had time to study for the night before) I feel relief but also a bit of the laziness where you get over a really difficult week but still have half of all the work to go and you just want to stay in bed and read all day for a few days. I kind of got off topic there and I know the sentence didnt really make that much sense, but what I was trying to say was, I haven't completely gained this calmness back yet because of the schoolwork and the gloomy weather, but I know its there, and Im glad it is.
To explain myself better, Id like to refer to a past blog post where I talked about how the warmth reminded me of the beginning of my year here and how there was a point this year where my mind had opened up to the world. That period was one of my favorite emotional states to look back upon because I felt more like "myself" (just generally more comfortable with everything I did) than ever and it was a stage where I often spaced out, caught upon a train of thought thatd appear out of nowhere and I felt a lot more inspired to learn, to read and especially to write. Now, a few months later, even though it feels like decades, and a lot of experiences later as well, I feel like I'm returning back to that state of mind, this time with nearly perfect language skills to express myself, and another language on its way (actually, Im writing a poem in my euskera class, which even I didnt know I was capable of). In general, I'm really happy with my experience here, and I think i'll keep doing things that way, expiration date or not.
