Currently sitting in my favorite spot, the terrace just off of my room in my home in Sevilla. The maroon walls are covered with overgrown green plants and lined with countless pots of all different shapes, colors and sizes. The floor is covered in beautiful tiles with touches of blues, pinks, whites and yellows. To my left, a rusty spiral staircase that leads up to another hideaway that I love to escape to. To my other left, a bag of ‘mini gores de caramelo’ cookies that I have fell in love with ever since my host mom gave me one after dinner one night. As I’m sitting at the wooden picnic table, cookies in hand, four stories up from my crowded Sevilla street, Calle Alfonso XII, breathing the warm air, listening to the distance voices of the Sevillanos enjoying their cervezas and tinto de veranos, I feel at home.
No matter how much I feel like a silly American lost in a Spanish city at times, I still feel like a part of this small, funky & beautiful city. I love walking to school through the narrows street smiling at the cafe owners opening up for the day. I love all of the street performers and street vendors I see on my walk home from school that remind me of Portland. I love walking slow, embracing the Spanish lifestyle. I love coming home on chilly days to my little, weak Spanish heater and hugging it to sleep. I love when my Spanish mom calls up the stairs ‘COMEN’ and myself and the other three girls race down five flights of stairs just as excited each time to see what she’s cooked for us. But most of all, I love this terrace…Maybe because it reminds me of my mom and her little garden at home. It reminds me of how much love she puts into our backyard–all of the different pots blooming with flowers and her homemade labyrinth covered in hundreds of stones that she has collected from all over. I appreciate so much that I am able to find pieces of my home in Palo Alto and my home in Portland in my new home, that I love so dearly, Sevilla.