I wrote this a long time ago, offline, waiting to board my flight home:

How do I feel, sitting here in Barajas Airport, waiting to fly back home after 6 months?

Surprised; there’s a bilingual announcement demanding that passengers with destination: America arrive at their gate an hour and a half early. I’m here, 1 1/2 hours early, with three others and the gate is closed.

Sad, for the reason I’m returning early, compounded by the normal sadness of leaving a new temporary home.

Happy, that I get to enjoy my American food again.

Apprehensive: Do I appreciate my family more when they aren’t next door? Perhaps I’ll need Madison sooner than I thought.

Not worried, about my grades this semester; I should be, but it’s a typical semester-abroad reaction.

Tired, for not sleeping much last night and for thinking about the 10 hours Iberia Airlines is about to change into 3.

Disappointed, that I didn’t reach some of my goals, travel to some of the places I wanted to, remember as much Spanish as I should have.

Satisfied, because at least I can carry my own in this second language. Even the customs agent implied as such, and they are usually meaner than an old Spanish widow.

LOLing because of the American stereotypes I am running back to, and to which I have already been exposed to in the airport (fat overtanned Texan, Maxim magazine in hand).

People seem most interested in my travels when I mention my trip to Morocco. The north African nation sounds exotic, like a lawless, spicy sand dune. Unfortunately, no desert camels for me, but donkeys, stray cats and decapitated goat heads in the northern city of Fes, where good friend Jake Lang was studying for the semester and where Ryan Air brought me on a long weekend for €40 roundtrip.

Although it came a week after frolicking in France, Morocco was quite different from the rest of my spring break, more of an eye-opening journey than a relaxing vacation. The entire trip I carried the mildly guilty sensation I was touring poverty. I don’t regret going: I stayed with cool friends, tried new food, learned new words and experienced a different culture up close. But I simultaneously feared robbery and desired to have a small child steal my wallet to even out the financial inequity.

Spain certainly was a new culture to dive into from my American armchair. But the quality-of-life changes far more in the tiny lick of sea between Iberia and Morocco than it does across the entire Atlantic. My weekend in Morocco taught me better than anything else that the world isn’t all elevators and La-Z-Boys.

Among my favorite cultural differences down south was food. Street vendor sandwiches the first day, which left me bearably sick for a week; wannabe churros (twice); tajine, mint tea and cous cous in an open air restaurant with caged birds singing above our heads; cheap Heineken from a sketchy store in the French neighborhood (alcohol is less prevalent in Muslim Morocco than Catholic Spain); scrumptious camel burgers from a touristy restaurant with friendly wait staff and Norwegian table-neighbors; and of course, I visit the Embassy in every country: McDonald’s as a pre-flight lunch (Moroccan McFlurry specialty: Toblerone)

It rained on and off, which made our hike up the mountain no more than a muddy attempt, though I still had to convert my umbrella into a parasol to shield my fair skin from the African sun.

I toured a tannery, smells and all; was scared out of my wits as a preteen guide led us either out of the medina or to certain, anonymous death; saw people buying handfuls of edible snails; got run off the dusty road by countless pack mules; bartered unsuccessfully for a Spanish soccer jersey; and survived perhaps the third-worst experience of my life in a Roman bath house.

But mostly I learned that the world is tough outside of the wealthy Western bubble. I knew just by having a bank account my family was among the richest in the world, but now I see how that’s true and that there’s just nothing fair about it. But I’m reminded that, apart from learning to live with needs and less wants, education is the best bet for giving millions more a better life. It’s the fairest and surest way to make things a little more equal.

After France and a night layover home in Madrid, I headed south to close out spring break. I wanted to see how Iberia does Easter and visit my cousins, on vacation from stateside.

Jesse and I had our own RENFE train car for the short 2 1/2 hour ride to Seville. Unfortunately, rain pitter-pattered on our windows from Madrid till the end of the weekend.

My trek to Seville had kind of a Motherland feel to it, probably because my mother was born on a nearby American Air Force base several centuries ago. Her students might say she gets her penchant for strictness from the authoritarian dictator who ran Spain when she lived there.

Moving on. It rained so much in Seville I ended up throwing out my shoes and buying 2 euro flip flops from a store run by Chinese immigrants. But we did get to see Plaza de España, a beautiful piece of Seville built in the 1930s and featured in Star Wars.

We were lucky to glimpse one of the pasos that help make Easter time in Seville so famous. Pasos are enormously heavy shrines, often featuring Jesus or his mother, carried down the streets of Seville during Semana Santa (Holy Week) on the backs of pious Catholics.

They have pasos and parades in the days before Easter all over Spain, but they’re most prevalent in the south and most famous in Seville.

Jesús gave us a break from rain on his special day, Easter Sunday. We peered inside churches, toured a gorgeous Arabic palace that my friends said they preferred to the Alhambra in Granada, and checked out the cathedral, the world’s third biggest church and the largest Gothic building in Europe. We climbed the giant cathedral tower, and upon looking out over the horizon to our dark, cloudy doom, raced to the bus stop for our overnight to Murcia before the return of the rain.

Murcia is a small city in the southeast of Spain, not far from the Mediterranean. My cousin Trevor, who studied there all spring, called it a hidden gem. Trevor’s mom and sisters, my cousins, were visiting him during their spring break, so I managed to spend Easter time with family, even in Europe.

We took the typical tour route in Murcia (art, cathedral, local food, giant suburban mall) then headed to the main attraction: the beach. The fam was staying in Los Alcázares, what seemed to be a fake town for British vacationers on Mar Menor, a particularly warm inlet of the Mediterranean. Spanish beaches in the spring can only be summed up in one word: beautiful.

After some wine and cheese on the sand, it was off to the train station and back to Madrid…back to impending finals and a hungry laundry machine. What a tough life it is to study abroad.