Still waiting on change...

I think that before I came here I thought that my life would be completely different. I would come to Europe and be a completely different person. I would just transform over night. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing, but that has not been the case.

It still doesn't really feel like I'm in Spain. It is really only obvious when everyone arond me is talking in Spanish or when I talk to my mom and it is 3 pm here and 7 am over there. I find myself the same person as when I left home. I have changed from last school year, that is for sure, but not as much as I thought that I would have. I left Coe with the thought that I was going to go out into the "real world" and become more of an adult- more sophisticated, more knowledgeable, more confident in what I want to do after graduation, I would find myself and my "calling." My plan was to set out and go to Washington, D.C. first and then Spain and return to Iowa after a year with the most amazing stories of my adventures. I wanted to go out and see places and do things that I never would be able to do back home, or had never been risky enough to do at home. I wanted it to be obvious that I was a changed person, that I had done the amazing. But I don't feel any different. I do not feel more mature or sophisticated. I feel kinda awkward, especially since I stand out a bit more here and still get lost since many of the streets look the same. Yeah, I feel slightly different than I did at the end of last school year, but on the whole, I am the same person that left Coe in May.

I think that I might have expected for the changes to be right there and that I would be able to see myself changing as it happened. For me, part of the point of leaving Coe for an entire year was to grow as a person and to realize who I am and what I want to do. I am sure that when I get back I will see that I have changed, but right now I feel like I am still the same old me, just across the world, just me in a different time zone. That is not necessarily a bad thing, being the same me, but I think that I want to see what a different me looks like.Maybe I am just searching for someone that does not exist. Maybe the me that I am right now is the me that is perfect just the way that I am and Spain is not going to change that.