Temporary Expatriate : When here and now cease to matter

Thanksgiving seems like so long ago now since I've traveled so much since then, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The last weekend in November, a group of us expatriate English teachers went to Malaga, Spain to celebrate. It's about a two and a half hour train ride away from Madrid. There are 4 or 5 teachers from my program that live and teach there.

We obviously didn't have Thanksgiving day off work, so we got together Friday afternoon and prepared quite a feast. Although we weren't able to scrounge up a turkey, I hardly missed it.

Speaking of missing, before I moved to Spain I was primarily worried about two things. 1) Learning the language. Obviously, this is a valid thing to worry about since many foreigners move to another country for a year without ever learning the language. And it's easy for this to happen because there are many people who speak English or want to practice with you. 2) Missing my friends and family back home. Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate missing out. I have major FOMO (Mom, that means fear of missing out) and I typically end up spending an evening trying to do what all my friends are doing, or saying something like, "I just really want all of us to be together all the time."

I do miss my family in Arkansas and friends in New York, but what I didn't account for was making new friends here in Spain. Good friends who I will also miss dearly when summer comes and school ends. It's true, there will always be someone to miss, and as I get older, there are continually more people to miss.

Back to Thanksgiving. I made this sweet potato appetizer, a favorite Smitten Kitchen recipe that I've made for past three years. It's always been a crowd pleaser, but this Thanksgiving, my friends chanted my name they loved it so much! Needless to say, I was thankful to have friends who truly appreciated my contribution to the meal.

The rest of the weekend was spent exploring Malaga. We went to the Picasso Foundation, which is the house where Picasso was born and grew up. There are photographs of his family, paintings by his father, as well as early works and sketches by Picasso. I didn't make it to the Picasso Museum (I'm still kicking myself), so I'll have to go back. We had dinner at Bodega El Pimpi and then went to the AC Hotel Malaga Palacio rooftop bar and had a lovely view of the Cathedral.

The city was decked out in Christmas lights, which honestly I liked more than the Christmas lights in Madrid! Madrid is lovely at Christmas, but the lights seem too small to fill the space of the street and end up looking like that one house on the block that half-assed putting up the light on their roof. Some are blinking, some are white, some are multi-colored, and you end up just criticizing their work ethic rather than enjoying the view. Maybe I over analyzed my appreciation of the Christmas lights in Malaga (surprise, surprise), but it's worth noting that you don't always find the best and brightest things in the biggest city in a country.

Here is our first attempt at making a family Christmas card picture,

and the second which was a success.

We had brunch together before we went our separate ways. The weather was the warmest, first day of December I've had in a long time. And the next day at work, my coworkers asked if I went sunbathing in Malaga.

I'm going to let T. S. Eliot have the last word. If I were a good, dedicated blogger, I would find an inspirational poem by an author from Malaga. But, I was reading my friend's blog which she named from this poem and I find it quite appropriate.

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty

desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast

waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end

is my beginning.
- T. S. Eliot

Lately, I've been listening to: