the prodigal son...

Tomorrow, I will be flying back with my family to America for a visit, pretty much 6 months from when we left. I am filled with mixed feelings and emotions and partially dreading this flight.

After 6 months here I have become, more noticeably, comfortable with the language. i notice I can "hear" it better it better than before as well as I think a bit faster. i say this is all due to practice and a lot of reading. Still I find it difficult to understand fully since my way of learning things are to read it and put my hands on it and there is no such luck in words floating from one´s mouth to my ears of accomplishing that feat. Still in time, i can only improve. Still i need to kick myself in speaking more often and with confidence. I just have to get over the reactions I have when i see people´s faces when they "scrunch" up thier faces while listening to me like they were reading a billboard 2 miles away like their lives depended on it.

I have since done more thigns to incorporate myself into daily life here. One of my biggest hurdles is the soccer team I have now. I am still struggling with basic things but that all due to the rapidness I have to say things. i do not have the luxury of thinking it over in my head and conjugating every words and polishing it before spitting it out. Still I feel the boys are very social and playful with me still so there is a little frustration. But they do not avoid conversations with me anymore.

I also was invited to play in an "old timers" game. this was a soccer match played on half of a field, for those older guys who enjoyed playing and wanted a bit of competition. I played with Jesus' team and we won 5-4. I scored 2 goals and had 2 assists in the first half so I felt pretty proud. So proud in the second half, their defense was more worried about me rather than my teammates enabling us to score more. Still there is not much to say about dribbling around 2 or 3 40 year old men. but one day i will be 40. Still I am working to open a monthly game since we seemed to have so much fun during the game.

Still my apprehension about going "home" tears me in half. I will have to see my mother cry when we leave again, her not knowing if we will return anytime soon. am still troubled with Carme's want to move back to the states and starting all over...yet again. Yes, we both can make a living in america and slowly build back up what we once had, but this time much smarter and more efficiently, but i wanted to give myself more tome here to fall in line with the culture and language. I know I will not be able to return to Spain again.

Why can't we return to Spain? Well we don't want to shake alx up too much even though he seems to be growing well here in Spain. he will it in just fine in America being that he speaks english with no issues. But there is a lingering feeling of racism here in Spain. Sometimes racism can be mistaken for the mere distrust and dislike for immigrants who mostly are African. You have to wonder if the treatment I get here is because of my darker skin and facial features. But my conversations with a few hear make me wonder. Spain has been such a closed sociaty siince the 1930's due to their dictator Franco, that it will take some time for Spain to be a true international comunity. Still I look at America and we still have our issues but that was based on slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights and so forth.

We will see how I feel once I return...stay tuned.