Reality

I’ve been having nightmares most nights since I first arrived here in San Sebastian. All of them are about being stuck in the United States in some horrible circumstances and not being able to get to Spain. After a few nights of these bad dreams I reflected on the fact that I still can’t believe I’m here- my subconscious is up all night trying to workout how it’s possible that I’m actually living in another country. My brain/heart/mind/body realizes how illogical this. Girls with no money, who struggle through school and come from broken families don’t just get up and leave the country… they don’t just suddenly find amazing jobs and people and boyfriends that they love and make a good life for themselves… they don’t keep pushing themselves through school, work their butts off for scholarships and land on the doorsteps of some beautiful costal town… right? 

My mind is still trying to comprehend that I meet all and none of the above criteria. That I am here right now and that none of the other “stuff”, the labels and assumptions and opinions and the big grad story I tell myself about who I am, none of it is real. I am right here. That is what’s real yet that that is what is the most difficult thing for me to grasp.

The shock that I have been experiencing here on a daily basis is much less a reaction to the differences in culture, time, food, directions, dates, values, language, landscapes, seascapes, currency, measuring units, and the different pace of walking, walking, walking, everywhere, everyone is walking all the time, which after a few days all feels quiet natural and easy, and more so to the mind blowing realization that I exist- here. now. and I like it. How, out of all the situations and things that have ever happened in the fate of The Universe is it possible that this is real? That I have such incredibly amazing classes and instructors in such a brilliantly well-organized study abroad program... How is it possible that I have such a perfectly comfortable apartment and two wonderful roommates who I absolutely adore? (One from Chico State and the other, Basque!) How in Heaven or Earth is it possible that such forces could come together so that I could feel the water and sand of the Atlantic rushing over my feet as I walked home from school today... Can I really stay here for a year? Can I really learn Spanish and some Basque, meet locals and maybe even get to know this place and it's people? 

Yes! All of it is possible! This is really real! 

While doing my homework last night I stumbled across the expression “hallarse” which roughly translates as "to find ones self". If I believe, as I have for quiet sometime, that the point of life is "to know and to love God", and "God" is every single thing in the Universe, then to set out on the journey to find myself and to know this place (and therefore better know and connect with the universe) truly is a pilgrimage and I go into it knowing how beautiful and precious this moment really is.