Kika: The Girl From New England, USA

Two days ago marked one month since my plane touched down in Madrid, Spain where I got a job as an au pair for the Dominiguez family. Two hours ago marked the moment I finally decided to get my arse in gear and do what I've been tempted to do for years: start a blog. To be honest, nothing I've ever done has really been worthy of blogging...but I figure packing up and taking off to Spain for ten months instead of going to college as planned is at least close to worthy... and so I begin!

As I have never blogged before, please forgive the occasional slip-up in various departments, although I promise you right now that I, as a crazy and often emotional teenager, will try and stay as far away as possible from any whiny or adolescent rants that remind one of nothing less than an open and awkward diary.

To say that my initial transition into Spanish society was a challenge would be the understatement of a lifetime, but true to my word I won't go into the messy details.

Maybe I wasn’t quite prepared for the obstacles and struggles I would have to face coming here on my own and knowing no one. As a gal who, I now realize, has been spoiled rotten with love and care from her family her whole life, it was a bit of a shock to suddenly feel alone in a strange country. Sometimes I think that if I knew what I would experience in my hardest moments here before I left I would have never left at all. In many ways this trip is a product of my stubborn, if untried and unproven, opinion that I am capable of making my own way in this world.

“If you don't jump, you'll never know if you can fly” (Miranda Lambert, New Strings).

So often it is that fear of the unknown that keeps us from speaking up and getting out and making our lives adventures, inside and out. More than I fear the unknown, I fear becoming a bench warmer in my own life, talking and talking about dreams and the way the world needs to change, but never getting off my couch or away from my computer long enough to do so. And even though in the beginning the jump makes me feel a bit more like I'm falling than growing wings, I, in a random moment, realize how much I have accomplished, how much I have changed and grown…and all the pent up anger and tears and frustration seem to lessen a bit.

So it hasn’t been a cake walk, and maybe if you had asked me in my first week here if all this was worth it,  to do something crazy because if you don’t you risk bench warming your whole life I would have said no, it hurts too much and I am tired of feeling so alone. But there was a moment, last week, when I realized all that I have felt in my last month here: love, a lack thereof, pain, loneliness, discovery, fear; everything was all a part of a great thing called Life and to be human is to have the good with the bad, the joy with the tears and I can honestly say that I would not trade the last month for one at home. This is what living is.

Now I feel almost like saying I am settled in wouldn't be a lie. The house feels more and more like a home every day, the family I live with closer and closer to my heart. Still so far to go, but look! How far I have come!

So, I hope I have stuck enough to my promise to keep you from being irritated with me. If not, remember, this too shall pass…

Have a great week,

Kika