Day 1: Perfectly Imperfect
We made it! After dreaming and planning for over eight months we arrived in Valencia, Spain yesterday. Our first day was perfectly imperfect and I’m looking forward to what’s next.
Yesterday I learned…
…that I have A LOT of work to do on absorbing Spanish! From our first interactions on the ground yesterday through to closing out our tab at a local bar it is clear to me that my top priority needs to be *really* learning Spanish. We fumbled our way through an immigration question, interacting with our Airbnb host, grocery shopping on a Sunday, and paying for drinks. Thank goodness for the basics (hola, muchas gracias, and habla inglés were all employed to varying degrees of success) and for the patience of everyone we encountered.
…that most things in Valencia really are closed on Sundays. Our new and temporary neighborhood is just that — a neighborhood. When we ventured out, bleary eyed and fighting to reorient our bodies to the Central European Time Zone (7 hours ahead of what we’re used to), almost all the shops were closed up tight. The markets that were open were like the wee corner stores back in Chicago, and it took until the third one before we succeeded at finding cheese and some produce (the hunt for eggs was unsuccessful). I’m looking forward to seeing the difference between Sunday and Monday when we head out today.
…that finding your people makes everything better. We were able to meet up with Graham from Settle Easy who has been helping us from afar with various and sundry arrangements for our new lives here in Spain. Meeting him at Nimes, a small bar within shouting distance from our Airbnb, to sit outside sipping vino tinto and talking about a blend of the personal and professional made me forget how tired I was. We said goodbye to so many friends and family members over the past few months that it was hard not to feel really alone. Those couple of hours with Graham yesterday left me feeling like yes, we can do this.
…that Bill and I don’t need much beyond each other to make things work. Traveling is stressful. Change is stressful. Traveling to a new country to change pretty much everything we know could easily have tipped us both over into the danger zone. Instead, we had the longest day in the history of days full of give and take and watching teamwork make the dreamwork. Our Airbnb is, as advertised, a tiny home (check out our front door below). Our luggage fills up most of the unfurnished space (a slight exaggeration…but not far from the truth). We don’t know where anything is among our suitcases. We don’t know how anything works here. We’re figuring everything out together, though, and that’s enough.
Nothing is, technically, perfect right now, and that is, in and of itself, perfection.
A few additional Day 1 photos:
