The time has come: something that was planned to happen two months before is now a reality. After a two-hour delay and a missed layover, the day has finally come.
My mom is here in Spain with me.
Once my class finished, I immediately left my building and headed straight to her hotel. We saw each other in the street nearby, and she came running up to me with open arms and tears streaming down her face. After almost four months, my mom needed her daughter, and I surely needed my mom.
Once I was accepted into my study abroad program, my parents immediately started to plan a trip to visit me during the semester. A trip was soon finalized right before I left the states, and they were supposed to arrive in the middle of February, the only time my dad could afford to miss work.
These plans took an unfortunate turn for the worse when my grandfather got unexpectedly sick right before my parents were supposed to leave and they were forced to skip their trip.
In something close to a miracle, my grandfather’s health improved and my mom started looking into other times she would be able to visit me. Due to the strains of my dad’s work, however, there was no way he could visit anymore. I initially told my mom to not come after this madness.
There was so much stress put on my family over this close call but nothing close to what my mother experienced. I didn’t realize in the moment how much she needed to come see me in person.
Now I have five days to show off a place I now call home to the person that made me feel at home no matter what. We will explore the typical tourist sites such as the cathedral with Christopher Columbus’ tomb, the Alcázar and Plaza de España.
My mom will have the opportunity to meet my Spanish mother here and share her gratitude of adopting me as her own this semester.
But what I am most excited for is to just be with her, showing how much this incredible semester has changed me into a better person.
People keep asking me if I am ready to go back to the states, or if I just want to travel the rest of my life. Of course I usually say the second option, but really I would like to just live in Seville longer.
This city is as much my home as the one in Aberdeen, New Jersey, at this point, and I can’t imagine leaving it in a few short weeks.
I could not be more grateful to have the opportunity to show off my home to my mom this week, to show her how this place allowed me to learn more about myself than ever before.
My host mother is excited to take a picture with me in the middle of my two “mothers” showing how grateful I am to have both of them in my life. Seville has introduced me to beauty I didn’t know existed, and I hope to expose this beauty to my mom over this week.
afmaling@indiana.edu
@aly_mali
