December 23 was a notable day for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, it’s the first day of our 2+ week Christmas vacation and the beginning of our travels around Andalucía.

For another, it marks exactly 3 months since we arrived in Spain.

I thought this would be a nice time to catch up on how we’ve been feeling and where we see ourselves heading. I also want to provide a little preview of our Andalucia trip since it’s going to be a doozy!

First of all, we’re doing well. It’s been a long, slow process of settling in, but things get better and better. It also feels like we’ve been here so much longer than three months, so I guess it really hasn’t taken us very long to feel relatively comfortable here, except that we’ve been living through it in slow motion. Living outside of your element really does make time pass more slowly, which is great on one hand — it’s so good to feel like I am living consciously, aware of each moment in a way I haven’t been in a long time — but it certainly does create a lot more headspace for analyzing your life and your choices, too.

But thinking of how I feel when I wake up in the morning every day, or when I’m sitting on the Metro on my way home from work, or out running errands, there’s a huge difference compared to how I felt even just a few weeks ago. There’s always the little struggles and slivers of panic when I don’t know if I’m supposed to give someone a double-cheek-kiss or a handshake, when someone is asking me a question on the street and I have no idea what they’re saying, when going to the post office feels like a Herculean effort, when I go to see Star Wars and realize that we’re at the version dubbed in Spanish (true story). Those probably aren’t going anywhere for a long time. But the bigger quandaries- would I be happier if I’d just stayed home? Is this experience worth all the trouble? Am I too old to be cavorting around like this? — those have faded away.

Which isn’t to say I ever truly questioned those things. But who’s ever made a major life decision before without doubting themselves? The point is, it gets easier and easier as time passes. The loneliness does, too. Haider and I have made some friends here, but we also have gotten much more accustomed to being content with just each other’s company — which was rare back in Philly, when we hardly did anything without at least 10 of our friends present.

Being away from family will never be easy, but it has gotten more manageable as well. On Thanksgiving, I was really depressed to be away from my loved ones. But now, at Christmastime less than a month later, I feel okay. It’s not that it doesn’t bother me, but it’s just something that I’ve adjusted to.

Traveling helps a lot, of course. It keeps us busy, engaged and excited. Lately we’ve struck a great balance between time spent away having cool experiences and time here in Madrid recharging our batteries. And when we are home, we’ve also been enjoying the city more and more for what it is. When you travel as much as we have been, seeing only the best of every place in a nice weekend-sized bite, it can be easy to feel disappointed with the place that you return to, where your “real life” exists (such as it is for us right now). But I’m starting to develop a deeper understanding of Madrid and a deeper respect for it as well. The city and its people have a lot of cool things to offer, and I’m really happy to be here right now.

Some of the things we’ve done in the last few months here in Madrid:

Went hiking in El Escorial, home to a medieval monastery

Rode cable cars and had a picnic in Casa de Campo park

Explored Madrid’s street art and DIY culture

Drank wine at sunset in the Retiro park

Checked out the Gran Vía Christmas lights after Friendsgiving dinner

Celebrated Christmas with my students and met the Three Wise Men (Los Reyes Magos)

So the question is, what comes next? I’ve always had an ongoing inner battle between the desires to wander and explore, and the call to nest and settle down. I love my cozy, familiar, comfy places, and I also like to be on the go, constantly experiencing new things. Some of my time-to-nest impulses are starting to kick in — maybe we should redecorate our apartment! Look, this could be our weekly brunch spot! Let’s buy more plants to make this place feel like home! But on the other hand, I’m holding life in Madrid at arms’ length, too.

When we left the US, we were more or less decided that we’d have to stay at least two years to get the full experience of living abroad and to justify everything that we sacrificed to get here. We’re still set on being abroad somewhere after this year, but are beginning to consider other places besides Spain. Coming out the other end of the tough transition here, I’m starting to feel like taking on an even bigger challenge — like moving to Korea next year. There’s a big practical benefit in that we’d make a LOT more money and be able to rebuild our savings, but the idea of starting over again in an even more different culture is also pretty exciting. Plus, I feel like if we do a second year in Spain, the nesting process will inevitably begin, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves — I’ll post more on this decision as we weigh it out over the next few months. Before we get to next year, we should talk about the next two weeks!

We are lucky enough to have over two weeks of paid vacation for the Christmas holidays, and we thought very hard about where we wanted to spend them. Surprisingly, most auxiliares seem to go back home for this time. I can’t deny that I’m super jealous of my three coworkers who are all back with their families right now (I’m the only one who stayed), but I also can’t imagine spending all that money and passing up such a great opportunity to do some extensive traveling.

We had two goals for this trip: 1. Go someplace warm where it won’t feel like Christmas and 2. Get our scuba diving certifications. Since flights are expensive around this time, we had to rule out Greece, the Canary Islands and the Azores; finally, we settled on something closer to home, but no less of an adventure.

Here’s the itinerary for our grand tour of Andalucía:

Dec 23-25: Granada
Dec 25-27: Málaga
Dec 28-29: Benalmádena
Dec 30-31: Ronda
Dec 31-Jan 1: Arcos de la Frontera
Jan 2-3: Cádiz
Jan 4-6: Seville

Highlights include the Alhambra (Granada), beaches (Málaga and Cádiz), scuba diving (Benalmádena), staying in a remote hostel outside a medieval town (Ronda), ringing in a super traditional Spanish New Year in a small pueblo (Arcos de la Frontera), flamenco dancing (Seville) and of course, food — Andalucía is the birthplace of the free tapa.

We had to rule out a few places; even though two weeks feels like forever, it’s amazing how quickly that time got eaten up as we mapped out our itinerary. The most difficult choices on the chopping block were Gibraltar (it’s a pain in the ass to get to/from, and apparently despite the allure of its views of Africa, the town itself is a bit boring) and Córdoba (it’s closest to Madrid so we can make an easy weekend trip of it another time).

I think the itinerary we ended up with will be a great mix of time spent in cities and small towns/nature, coastline and mountains and desert, history, culture and new experiences. It’ll be nice to have a break from airports, as we’ll be getting around via BlaBlaCar (a ridesharing website popular in Spain), buses and trains; I’m also looking forward to a slower form of travel as opposed to the super-quick, jam-packed trips we’ve been doing over the past few months.

Well, see you on the road, friends. In the next few days I’ll be posting about our trip to Lisbon, and later, about Andalucía. Feliz navidad and thank you for reading!