Home in Spain

My host family went to Barcelona for the weekend because the middle daughter is planning to attend the open house for prospective college students at the University of Barcelona. Aside from staying by myself in a college dorm room (in a suite full of suitemates, so it doesn't really count), this is the first time I'm sleeping by myself in an empty house.

It's really nice. I forgot how peaceful it feels to be alone. Homestay has been all sorts of wonderful, but it hasn't exactly been peaceful in that still-quiet kind of way.

This semester I'm living with a family of six in a medium-sized apartment. I've never lived with three sisters before, so I've been secretly pretending that I'm the fourth sister and that together we make up the Little Women ( this book always made me long for sisterhood). Besides almost always having to wait for my turn in the bathroom, living here has been a relatively smooth experience. At first, it was weird and here's why: living in someone's home as a stranger feels very odd. There wasn't any previously existing relationship between me and them to explain my sudden intrusion into their family equilibrium, my toothbrush in a holder with six others, my chair awkwardly placed at a table made for six. But I quickly learned things about them, and they learned things about me, and we found out that we shared so many similarities in our perspectives on life, which served as one of the key elements to my adjustment in Spain (ask me about it sometime).

Interestingly, they are not native Spaniards; instead, they emigrated from Ecuador almost twenty years ago. My padre, Frank, works at the Ford Company. At least once a week, Frank and I end up being the last ones at the dinner table while we discuss matters of religious spirituality and non-religious spiritually. These two things have been on my mind all semester, but these things have been on Frank's mind for decades, so I love to glean some of his wisdom. Two days ago, while we were eating some fruity yogurt for dessert, he told me that if he had stayed in Ecuador, he would have been a top bank executive by now (not in a boastful way, but rather dryly). Instead he says that his job at the factory is wearing him down so much physically, with the need to apply cream to his aching joints regularly. He told me this when the girls were in the kitchen washing dishes and his wife was putting little Danny to bed. But when he thinks about how much promise he sees in his kids' lives (academically, personally, and spiritually), these precious years of his that are being claimed by a merciless job aren't as precious as his family. If he needs to work a crappy job to be a supporter of his daughter's dream to study in London or his wife's desire to complete her bachelor's degree, then he's willing to be compensated with the knowledge that he does not take his love for his family lightly. Every time he wakes up at 4 AM to take the bus to work, he's loving his family something fierce.

And when he comes home from the long day at work, Frank twirls his young son around, kisses his wife, and merrily chats with his daughters about this and that.