Here we go again.

After spending a couple of years trying to figure out what's next in this strange journey we call life, I've met with the good fortune of having the opportunity to return to Spain for a few months this summer. As I pack up my suitcase and get the last of my things together, I can't help but reflect on my initial journey to Spain in 2011. How much can change in a span of only two years!

* At this point, I no longer face a seemingly-insurmountable language barrier. Before, I was hoping to improve upon a very basic linguistic foundation. I've since immersed myself in two different Hispanic countries and I've practiced with native speakers from all over. I've formally studied the language from a more technical perspective. Now it's possible for me to be focused on adding colloquial phrases and idioms to my repertoire.

* I now have a TEFL certification and a lot more teaching experience. I spent a year in a MA in Teaching program and did student teaching at the high school level. I then went to Costa Rica last summer and obtained my TEFL certification, allowing me to professionally teach English to people in other countries. If the me of today met up with the me of 2011, I'd have a lot of suggestions and ideas for myself that only experience has taught me.

* I've traveled to Central America! In addition to studying different dialects in the classroom, I've managed to live in another Hispanic country and pick up on their dialectal differences and compare them to those of Aragón. I hope to study more of those differences within Spain now that I have a firmer grasp of the language and a wider sample group.

* And perhaps one of the more exciting differences is that I'll have a travel partner along the way (Susan!), something that was severely lacking in some of my previous adventures. Traveling alone was something that I became accustomed to during my time in Spain. It was an experience that challenged me to learn more about myself and to do a lot of self-reflection. However, there is a sense of longing for someone else to share those experiences with when you're on the road alone. I look forward to Susan's good company and the new memories we will make together.

I'm excited to reunite with Susan and some of my old friends from Teruel. I can't wait to make new friends, either. Unfortunately, experience doesn't truly dull the pain of navigating airports and being sedentary for over eight hours at a time. It's a small price to pay, I suppose.

¡Adiós de nuevo, Kentucky! Nos vemos dentro de poco.

And so it ends...

My last week in Spain was spent teaching and going to goodbye dinners. There was little time for sleep, which, in conjunction with the intense heat outside, did little to help my mental and physical state. When I did try to squeeze in a siesta, I was interrupted by the sound of open windows being forced shut and open again by the wind. I couldn't lock them shut because then I'd be too hot to sleep. As a result, I was kind of zombie-like for a solid four days. I enjoyed the company of students and colleagues and friends, but by the end of the week, I was having extreme difficulty concentrating on half the things they were saying. And while I had absolutely nothing planned outside of a few relaxing hours of packing, I was convinced to go hiking on my last day in Teruel.

It was Friday and the weather was incredible. Unfortunately, it was incredibly hot too. I prepared by applying sunscreen to every exposed part of my skin except for the back of my neck. I would later regret that decision. I met up with my friends, Libby and Eva, and we went hiking to the ruins of a small Iberian village about two miles from Teruel. There were signs posted that informed interested passersby about the history of the site, but it was entirely too hot and I was too sleep deprived to focus on it. I did find various pieces of broken pottery and Eva lectured me on the differences between Iberian creations and Roman handiwork.

Belchite, Escucha, and Sarrión

Friday was my very last day in the primary school. The teachers all left for Turkey as part of their international project they're doing and won't be back until the day after I depart for home. It was depressing to have to say goodbye to them and then just kind of stick around. I don't feel nearly as integrated into the high school, and the teachers that I do feel more comfortable around are gone to Andalucia as part of a student project. I still have the language school, though, where my coworkers and students are always really friendly. Unfortunately, the last two weeks have been day after day of saying goodbye to each class of students, as each day is the last I'll be there with that particular group.

This weekend, I went to Zaragoza yet again and stayed with the other Italian teacher from the language school. I met her family, which was really entertaining, and we all set out on a busy day trip to Belchite and Escucha. She had been wanting to show me Belchite for quite some time, but due to various scheduling differences and whatnot, we hadn't been able to go. I'm glad that during my last weekend, I finally got to check it out.

Our first stop was seemingly in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the countryside a decent distance from Belchite. There was a bunker of sorts and some trenches from the civil war. It was quite different from the other places I'd been to, so it was a welcome addition.

Visiting Zaragoza and Madrid

Despite the situation with my grandmother, last week and this weekend were nice. I didn't have to work at the high school on Thursday because they were taking exams and Friday I went with the kids to Zaragoza on a field trip. From what I could tell, it was a joint field trip between the science classes and the history classes. I was tipped off by the fact that we went to an environmental science center and a bunch of Roman ruins.

I'm told that the kids at the high school are fairly well-behaved in comparison to other schools in Spain. I suppose they don't get in fights or bring guns to school or anything, but "well-behaved" is not an adjective that I would ever even think of using when describing them. Nonetheless, they are entertaining. They, like the kids in the primary school, assume that I don't understand a word of Spanish. I'm still baffled by how they could believe that, considering I've been living here for several months now. So when I have a grin on my face after they just swore or insulted one of the teachers under their breath, they get red-faced pretty quickly. It's weird because I don't

Descanse en paz, Granny Faye

The following is more personal than my travel blog normally is, but it is in some ways related to being in Spain (while not actually being about Spain itself). It's important to me and I think that being in Spain has made this situation even more complicated than it would have otherwise been.

Last week, I found out that my grandmother had passed away. I had known for a long time that this had been a possibility because of her poor health and complications. But even so, it came as a shock. It's the first time in quite a while that I've lost anyone that close to me in the family and experiencing it now, as a supposedly wiser and more mature twenty-three year old, I assumed it would be different somehow. I figured I'd be more prepared for a loss of this magnitude and be able to reason my way out of taking it too harshly. How arrogant I can be at times.

It's difficult to know how to react to something like this, even if you think you're wiser and more prepared for these types of things. But really this is just another learning experience. I think, on some level, the expectation is that all those years

Valencia with David

I went to Valencia with my roommate, David, last Sunday. He had a short race to run in the park, so I tagged along to get a better look at the city than just the airport (which is all I had seen previously). We left early Sunday morning and made the hour and a half-long journey, listening to Mike Oldfield and conversing in the surprisingly effective way that we do (I speak in Spanish and my roommate speaks some kind of Spanglish). I probably drove him mad asking about just about every road sign or interesting-looking city between Teruel and Valencia.

Meeting some personal goals and working a bit much

I spoke too soon when I claimed it wasn't fall yet. It has been cold and rainy all week.

I'm starting to reap some of the benefits of being a teacher now, especially with the number of students I have (several hundred). I often see my students out and about in Teruel and they are always friendly. Many of them have invited me to go out to eat with them or have a coffee (and usually when I accept, they pay!). I think I could get used to this. But outside of getting free food, I have noticed that my presence in the classroom, both in the primary school and the foreign language school, has made some impact on the students' learning. While I don't consider myself all that qualified to be a teacher, I think I'm at least doing something right. The kids in the primary school go from being outright hostile to the idea of learning English to exclaiming "hello, how are you?" (or as Spaniards pronounce it, "how are jew?") every chance they get. It's a transformation that happens in just a couple of days because the kids are only there for one week and then a new set of them arrives. Perhaps it's merely the novelty of having a strange American around, though hopefully it's more than that.

At the foreign language school in Teruel (where I teach in the evenings), I have been giving a similar lecture to every class for two weeks now. There are three different levels of English classes, two classes per level, and several groups of classes in each one. So I will be in each class roughly once every two weeks or so. Thus far, I have been introducing some general information about Kentucky and about myself and then allowing the students to ask me questions in order to practice their English and to get them used to hearing a native speaker. Depending on the level, this is much more difficult than I had anticipated. My accent is somewhat neutral compared to what it could be, so the students usually have an easy time understanding me, assuming they know the vocabulary. However, I often find myself using turns of phrase and slang that they are not familiar with and speaking too quickly for them to follow me. I have also realized that they learn British English from their Spanish teachers, so some of my pronunciation (especially the T in words like Italy or twenty being pronounced as Idully or twinny) is hard for them to understand. Overall, however, the students at this school have expressed great interest in not only improving their English but exchanging cultural ideas as well. This is great for me because I often learn just as much as they do.

I have also noticed an improvement in my Spanish. I have picked up a lot more vocabulary, through independent study, association with all of the words I see on buildings and signs, and in everyday conversations with people. I especially enjoy learning the colloquial words and phrases. I believe my speech is becoming more coherent and I can do more than convey simple ideas now. But perhaps the most considerable change has occurred in my comprehension. I attribute this in part to having settled down and gotten used to the language and the people speaking it, though I have also managed to increase the amount of things I can understand and the range of people I can understand as well. At first, it was primarily slow-talking women that I could understand because their voices and pronunciation are typically better in my experience so far. However, I can now understand the low, muffled voices of some of the old men as well.

This week I have been ridiculously busy in the two schools but I have managed to accomplish several of my goals for the week. First of all, I set out to learn how to use my fancy camera in full manual mode. I've owned the camera for quite some time now and made pitiful efforts towards using it manually on entirely too many occasions. I decided it was high time that I learned. I found an online "class" by Alexandre Buisse and read almost every lesson in two days, all the while practicing with my camera. The result is that I now know what every part of my camera is for and how it works and I have way more control over the shots I take. To test out my progress, I decided to take pictures in the one situation I've never been able to get a decent shot in - at night. Despite a few flaws, I think some of the pictures turned out quite well (and none of them have been doctored up):

This last picture is of a hotel that sits atop a Medieval passageway. They also have some excellent tea that you can drink underground in a cozy room with walls made of stone. It may be one of my new favorite places in Teruel, as it combines two amazing things: history and tea.

My second goal for the week was to open a bank account so that I could get paid for this month's work. I managed to do so by myself. This is the first difficult thing I've done on my own. Usually one of my mentors is there to make sure I don't screw something up. I even had a nice conversation with the banker about Kentucky and about the popularity of his surname in this region. The fact that I managed to do that on top of the technical stuff makes me proud.

In addition to the things I had planned to do this week, I also spontaneously decided to go to a volleyball game and go out to have tapas with some of the teachers at the foreign language school. Apparently Teruel has the best volleyball team in Spain. Unfortunately, they weren't playing a Spanish team when I went. They lost (though it was a close match) to a Polish team. One of the teachers at the foreign language school took me along and I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. The fans were exactly like any other sports event in any other country I've been in - they are loud and they always make what they believe to be better calls than the referee. My favorite part of the whole event was that the best player on Teruel's team was an American. I wanted to go talk to him after the game but we couldn't get to him. Perhaps next time we can have a chat. It would be interesting to know how he ended up in Teruel and how he's getting along here.

Last night I went to a bar called Torico Gourmet, home of the number one tapa in some contest from 2009. It lived up to its reputation. The tapa had ingredients that were all grown or raised in villages around Teruel. It was absolutely delicious. Then again, I don't think I've tried much food in Spain that I haven't enjoyed. The teacher that invited me out paid for all of the tapas as well. Then we had to go to another bar for coffee (or in my case, tea). What I thought was going to be a short dinner ended up turning into several hours of learning about different foods, slang, and Spanish television. I enjoyed it but I paid for it today, as I had to get up early for work.

That's what siestas are for, I suppose. It's almost 10:30 and I'm about to go out to a bar to listen to jazz music. Hopefully I can get home at a decent hour, though that's never the case with the Spaniards.