Madrid — Young Minds

Hello world!

So… I’m on to my fourth week here. It is weird because vacations are so short and yet your expected to see so much and you do so much and I’ve been here for four weeks. In my mind I felt as if that was what I was here for, a vacation, I was going home after a week, and when I wasn’t arranging plans to go home, it finally started to settle in. It is still almost awkward writing “four weeks” down, expressing it makes it feel real in a sense. Well I’m here for six months and already time is flying by. Within my program I met two amazing girls here, Elizabeth and Libby. I told myself “there is no way you’re not going to meet amazing people there, how could those embarking on a gap year not be exactly that, amazing and even a little ambitious.” I continued to repeat those words to myself, over and over, as if I was almost trying to convince myself. Many times I told myself to lower my expectations because I didn’t want to be let down, because I thought maybe I was dreaming unrealistically, but in reality, fantasizing was my way of coping with the huge change I was about to undergo. As far as “fantasizing too much” goes, I wasn’t. They are amazing, and each one of us are uniquely different from one another but alike in so many ways at the same time. I then felt empowered by my thoughts, that maybe “dreaming” wasn’t such a bad idea. The city has yet to let me down. Madrid is enticing, livable, and dreamy. It is easy to find what you need here; to be whoever you want to be. The city is a new world, a start for so many people. It is filled with an uncountable amount of new people, so many that it is practically impossible to find a family that has been here for three generations, as our madrileños tour guide would say “it would be like finding a four leaf clover.”

Despite all the chit chat… In retrospective this is the hardest thing I have ever done and at the same time, most definitely the best thing I have ever done. Being here is like experiencing a nostalgic day dream, beforehand I was constantly fantasizing, to an extreme amount, about what this experience would be, then to jump into it, and have it lead the way… meeting my expectations and also not. It was like nothing I had done before, it was difficult, to know when to settle down, when to rest, to eat. Every emotion, conversation, meal, and person seemed to come flying at me and I wasn’t sure how to slow it down, nor did I want to slow it down. I think in many ways it was the fleeting emotion of freedom I was experiencing. For the first time I was out in the world, on my own, without much contact to home, in a place where English is not the native language. I was in a city where everyone moved with ease but with fire in their eyes, each person was moving throughout the day as if they had a list of “to-do’s,” but at the same exact time they moved around the city like they had nothing better to do then to just sit and indulge in a conversation with a friend for hours at a small café table in the Plaza sipping on a café con lèche or large beer. Madrid. It is well... It is alive, the people, the music, the architecture, the whole city is just uncompressible and ungraspable. I can’t wait to continue sharing my journey with you guys and everything that has yet to come. I have some extremely exciting adventures planned and they will end up on here and a little on my YouTube channel, so stay tuned!

Below are some small glimpses of the electric Madrid. Until next time.

XOXO,

Lauren.