It seems a hallmark of good sitcoms is that they conclude with characters moving out.

Both Friends and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had their finales end with the main characters standing at the door of an empty apartment/mansion, silently reminiscing on the good times they (and we) have had, before turning the lights off for the last time.

The weekend I left for Spain felt like the finale to my personal sitcom.

Friday night, I checked and double-checked my luggage. I had sent an introductory email to my host mom and was waiting on a response. Most of my goodbyes had been said at a bon voyage party the weekend before, or during the week I had been on campus. There was only one thing to do now:

Out. I need to get out.

I walked over to see my friend Katie. We talked for a few minutes, and then I hugged her goodbye and left. I finally showered and sat down on my bed.

First time out of the country. First time on a plane. Speaking Spanish for 4 months. All with a group of mostly strangers. What a time.

I let the uncertainty flow. 4 months was a long time. Was my money going to last that long? What even was the plan? I still wasn’t 100% certain of when I was going to start school, and the only thing I knew about my host parents was their names. What about group dynamics? There were a few outliers, but the majority of the group was your default Calvin student: tall, Dutch West Michiganders. Experience had taught me that local kids tended to clique up, and that was in their own backyard. How bad could it potentially get thousands of miles from Michigan?

1 year later, I can answer all of those questions: I did have enough money. If you want proof foreign language textbooks are a scam, buying the textbooks for my 301 Spanish class was a bigger hole in my finances than almost anything related to Spain. The first week of traveling through Spain was exhaustive, but I would do it again, albeit after I’ve worked through the jet lag. There did end up being some loose “cliques”, but it wasn’t an exclusive thing. Less Mean Girls and more Scooby gang splitting up: some people hung out with other people more than they did others, but we were all one big happy family at the end of the day.

Anniversaries (or three weeks after them, in this case) are a time to reflect on the event you are celebrating. People celebrate how much they’ve grown between one birthday and another. Couples celebrate years of love on their wedding anniversary. People in recovery use sobriety anniversaries to celebrate the deep hole they pulled themselves out of.

So, what have I taken away from Spain?

Some things can never be replicated, and that’s not something you can mourn too long. I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll quote from that:

On the other hand, I know I’m living in a snapshot, that just as the Detroit and the Calvin [University] I will return to will not be the Detroit or the Calvin I left, the Spain I could return to will not be the Spain I left. My friends, Calvin or otherwise, will scatter.  My host parents are in their golden years; it’s a very real possibility that one or both of them will be dead if I ever return.

The idea of “you can’t go home again” is a particularly hard pill to swallow. As desperately as I want to sit with friends in Guinness or smash some 100 Montaditos, those exact circumstances with those exact people can never be replicated.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Little reunions–collaborating with Spain people for Spanish people, Prof. Pyper holding a mini-reunion in April, chance encounters around campus–get the memories flowing like they just happened. It’s part of the reason why I’m still writing The Lost Stories of Spain: to have written accounts of great memories.

It’s bittersweet that I can never truly travel back to the Spain I left. But as a wise Infinity Stone-wielding android once told us:

Changing opinions. There are many differences between emigrating to another country and studying abroad. Immigrants travel hoping their residence will be permanent; abroad students know from the get-go their time overseas has an expiration date. Studying abroad is a luxury; with many immigrants, leaving their home country is a matter of life and death.

I do think studying abroad makes you look at immigration in a new way.

You are about as vulnerable as you can be when you are abroad. You are often alone, or with a small group of people, surrounded by thousands of people whose intentions are hidden behind a language barrier, and often carrying valuables on you. There are fewer times the importance of hospitality is realized than when you’re abroad.

Now again, this is not a fair comparison. A college student from one first-world country to another so he can live with a host family and go to university does not face the same ordeals as, say, someone fleeing from a civil war or gangs with just the clothes on their backs. But I am more sympathetic to the plight of immigrants. I can understand the vulnerability of putting your well-being in the hands of complete strangers, the fright of being surrounded by people who don’t look like you or speak the language you do. And, even moreso than I would have a year ago, I condemn America’s treatment of immigrants and the anti-immigrant rhetoric so commonplace now. The amount of callousness needed to pass off someone as vulnerable as a human can become a drug dealer or a rapist is alien to me.

*kicks soapbox away*.

And lastly…

You will never be the same after traveling…and that’s good! There’s a webcomic that shows the powerful effect travel can have on someone:

And you don’t need to be a Klansman to be positively affected by traveling. There’s a reason pilgrimages are such a big part of many religions. Travelling, by definition, means a disturbance of your normal. And to quote myself when people ask me about coming to Calvin: “If I wanted the same old same old, I would have stayed home.”

So here’s to a great experience abroad, and hopefully more down the line.