Small girl BLOG #3

I can’t believe I have officially reached the halfway point for my semester abroad.

It feels like just yesterday I was sitting in my apartment in NYC talking with my roommate about how anxious I was about this new experience. The weeks leading up to my trip to Madrid were filled with a lot of reflection, nostalgia, excitement, and nerves. I spent a lot of time looking back on the incredible life I had built in the city and looking forward to the incredible experience that was to come in a new city. I also reminisced on the personal growth I had done in just a couple of months. More specifically - I got a hold of my spending habits, learned to truly love my body, and really immersed myself in my academics. I really felt like I was ready to go abroad. Then I arrived and nothing was as I expected it to be.

Madrid is truly the perfect place to spend a semester abroad in. It’s a big city in the sense that there are plenty of museums, restaurants, parks, concerts, bars, and shopping, and it’s a small city in that you can almost get anywhere by foot and learn your way around pretty quickly. Having family that lives in Madrid and my mastery of the Spanish language definitely made my transition to life here very smooth. But of course, there are still some obstacles I am struggling to overcome/deal with. It’s safe to say that I am a control freak at times and abroad has been a major test to that.

I haven’t been able to control my spending, I haven’t been able to keep myself in shape, and I haven’t been able to really immerse in my academic experiences. These were things I worked very hard at improving while in NYC that changed due to my new situation. I think the reason I haven’t been able to “control” these factors is because they get in the way of having uninterrupted fun. Being responsible for these factors means being realistic in a daydream, which is literally what living abroad feels like. I’ve had to come to terms with my spending and accepted that I’ve saved up for many years for this time in my life. I’ve also had to come to terms with my coursework. All of the classes I’m taking are electives and therefor don’t speak to me like my past classes have. Where I’m struggling the most is in accepting the fact that my body is changing. I don’t exercise as much, I splurge on culinary experiences, and my pants are no longer fitting me. It’s been hard to accept that I’ll come back to the city in a body I’m not totally comfortable in. I learned to love myself when I physically felt amazing. Now, I have to learn to love myself even when my body doesn’t feel or look the way I want it to. The best advice I received for dealing with these changes was from my bestie who told me to just buy bigger pants. My body, just like my heart and my mind, are never actually in a perfect state. There’s always progress to be made, bumps in the road, and moments where I just have to accept where I’m at. This is one of those moments where I’m just hoping to find some comfort in the discomfort.

I hope that one day I’ll be able to say that I’ve overcome these obstacles or that I’ve learned to deal with them. I can’t wait to see what personal growth I’ll achieve in the second half of my time abroad.