How New is the New Year?

This is my first blog of the New Year, and it could be my last. It’s embarrassing but true- I´m from Boston yet I´ve never been snowboarding, and this weekend were going on the Suffolk sponsored Ski trip in the Pyrenees mountains that divide Spain and France. I was thinking a hill might be more appropriate for my first time, but I guess a mountain will be more, hm, exciting? Plus that’s kind of my style, living in Spain without ever having taken a Spanish class, snowboarding down a mountain without having gone down a hill. I can hear my mom´s concerned sigh as I sit here writing this. Relax mom, I´ll be fine. (It’s amazing- she manages to embarrass me from 3000 miles away- but that´s a good mother I guess)

Since it’s a New Year I figure might as well start it off with a new experience like snowboarding. But a lot more comes with the New Year, new classes, new people, new hobbies, and new realizations. For example, I´m realizing that somewhere in the last couple months I´ve forgotten how to spell ‘embarrass’. Or maybe I just never knew? Isn´t there another ‘e’ in there somewhere? I really thought so… But moving on…

As things change, for example the new influx of students here at campus, it’s important to recognize the things that stay the same. The couches are still just as comfy in the common room. The teachers are just as lively. The Spanish ‘grannies’ still like to use all 50 seconds allotted to them to cross the smallest of streets, all the while making sure you can´t even dream of getting around them. The Peruvian flute bands which pop out of nowhere on the train, fully equipped; infinitely pulling instruments out of a teeny bag. They´re like the clown car of bags, they can carry a whole band around in one of those things.

                But even the things that stay the same are perceived differently in a new light, a new year. The city itself. It has the same aura, the same smell, yet it feels different. I don´t feel like I´m dreaming anymore. I’m not on vacation. I’m not starting a new chapter of my life, I’m simply living it. The key difference- this time when the plane’s tires hit the asphalt of the runway with that terrible jolt upward I didn´t think, ‘okay, let´s do this’. I thought ‘I´m finally home’.

                That´s it. A new year. New people. New things. New perceptions. Same city. Just now, its home.