Last night I rung in my fourth new year in Spain. The first one (2009-2010) was memorable because it was the first NYE I’d spent away from both my family and my friends. That December 31 I spent at the disco, dancing and drinking alongside people that I haven’t seen again. The second one (11-12) was lonely: I’d arrived in September 2011 and didn’t know too many folks yet. Plus I got a bad cold that week, limiting my capacity to have fun. I spent that NYE standing in a crowd of people in Plaça Catalunya, with the typical feeling of being by myself in a sea of people. I ate my grapes (a tradition here) at midnight and called it an early night. And now this year I’ve hosted a get-together with my boyfriend in our flat and I have to say how amazing it feels to have evolved so much in such a short time. 

I think fondly of this passage from The Interpreter of Maladies and think it’s quite apt for me at this point in my life: “…I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times when I am still bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

It really still does amaze me to see how far I’ve come, and makes me hopeful to think of what’s in store.

Happy 2014!