When in Huelva

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for my long absence from this, my own blog.  To tell you the truth, I just haven't felt like writing.  Also, life hasn't been that exciting here; I go to school, I come home, do one of the several flavors of nothing I have access to, and then start the cycle over again.  To encapsulate my last post-now life, I've been bored and confused and uncertain.

Partly it's my fault.  I've been feeling depressed lately, and I've let the depression get the better of me and keep me from doing things.  This can't happen.  Huelva isn't the most exciting place in the world, but there are still things to do--go to the gym, go to a soccer game (which I did do yesterday, actually; Recreativo Huelva sucks, but it was a fun time), explore places I haven't been--and I just haven't been doing them.  An adage that I like is, "only boring people get bored."  This is not wholly true--adages rarely are--but it does highlight an important principle; namely, that we are in control of what we do each day.  Bill Watterson comments on the same principle in Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin is outside looking for something "weird" and, upon finding nothing, heads into the house to get Hobbes and bursts back out the front door, saying, "If there's no weirdness around, we'll just have to make some!"  That should be my viewpoint.  It goes back, as do so many things, to attitude; change that and I change my boredom.

I'm also worried about next year.  I have no idea what I'll do.  I could do this program again; returning auxiliares get location preference, so I could go where I want.  But I'm sick of being separated from my friends and loved ones back home, even though this job really is an awesome opportunity.  I could go to Korea, which is like this program but I'd work more (in my current view, a good thing) and actually lead classes.  It also pays really well and has great benefits, and I need some money so I can go to grad school.  But Korea has all the same downsides of Spain plus some more; I'd be there longer, it's farther away, I don't know the culture or the language at all.  I could also go find a job in the US, maybe even in Grand Rapids.  But one of my friends, who has recently moved across the country for grad school, said something which resonated with me.  He had a choice between Northwestern and Cal-Berkeley and chose Cal.  I asked him why and he listed a few reasons, like Cal being slightly better for the field he was entering.  But mostly, he said, "(I) don't want to be the type of person that can't leave home."  I don't want to be that person either.  I didn't get a chance to go away for college, so this is my chance.  One year doesn't seem to me like enough, either; I need more time away.  But at the same time, I miss my friends and girlfriend and the familiarity of the place I've grown up with.

What makes this urgent is that I have to start thinking about this now.  That's the thing about the future; it never takes as long as you'd think to become the present.  And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bid adieu to the café Viva la Chocolate, my favorite rumination spot in Huelva, which is closing due to issues with the landlord (if anyone's counting, this is the second café which has played a formative role in my life that is closing due to landlord issues--R.I.P. Four Friends) and which I will miss far more than I think they know.  I'll try to write more frequently in the future.