Adios Espana...Alicante: I've Had the Time of My Life

            Well today was the day I had been dreading and looking foreward too all at the same time. Last night was my last hurrah in Alicante, I’m on my way to Madrid and then on Friday I return to the US. I can’t believe that it’s been 5 months already since I landed and had my luggage missing in Madrid. Looking back that was truly the start of an adventure. Since then I’ve seen almost every community in Spain, traveled to Italy, France and Scotland and made some of the best friends I will have for the rest of my life. As hard as it is to leave them we all looked at it not as goodbye but as see you later. I really do hold to that statement I know a lot of people from Chicago and that area and then some of the people I have met here are going to be visiting so I will get to see them. However the one thing that I wasn’t ready for was how difficult it was going to be for me personally to say goodbye to my home away from home. The most tears that were shed in Alicante were shed with my host family, they were my rock in Alicante. Even though I’m going home to see my real family its really difficult to believe that they are going to be 7 hours away from me, abel, amparo and gina. I’m going to miss eating meals with them and picking on abel over soccer games. If I learned anything about Spain its that they are extremely family oriented people and living with my family that was something that I was reminded of every day that I lived there. As for the people in my program, I can only hope that I was as good of a friend to you as you all were to me, you guys truly made my experience in Spain unforgettable and because of that I am truly grateful. You proved to me that you really can get to know someone in a relatively short period of time and during that time you can change her life forever. So my best memories of Spain, there are too many to count but the things that really stick out are:

1)   The first weekend that we had real beach weather….in February

2)   Carnival…and the mess that it became J

3)   My trip to Barcelona and the FCB game

4)   Spring Break

5)   The Fraziers and Maher’s visiting Alicante

6)   The time spent with my host family

7)   Finally all the times pregaming with friends….sometimes the pregame was more fun than the actual night out!

So really what did I learn from my time in Spain? I learned to live life to the fullest because this opportunity was once in a lifetime and I needed to make sure that I enjoyed every minute of it! USAC Alicante Spring 2011 you will always have a place in my heart and I hope that you can look back on our pictures and smile because in the words of Dr. Seuss “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”.