It's never easy to say goodbye

It's almost a week that I dont sleep well. The issue that most of you, erasmus students, are gone is breaking me...

I don't realize, well, I think I don't want to realize that all of you are gone (one every day, what a punishment!). I want to think that you are home on holidays but that you will come back again.

Tramway Court and Abberley are every day more and more silent, and parties are every day more and more empty...

My dear neighbours, I will miss our visits. My door bell doesn't rings as much as it used to... I used to like to think that I was going to come across with some of you coming back home from somewhere... however, the feeling of emptiness is every day bigger and bigger.

Everytime I will listen to those songs that we took as soundtrack of these months here, in some club or maybe in 10 years, our memories will be with those songs and as long as the song will sounds, Ireland will come back to our heads again. Won't be distances enough to stop us from smiling for a second.

The momories you've left in Ireland will be difficult to replace. Thank you for all the moments, for the parties, for the laughs, for the dinners, lunches, breakfasts, for the trips, for the dances, for the songs, for the movies, but overall, thanks for all the things you have tought me because all of these things make me a better person.

Even if the goodbye is hard, I'm glad that I have known you, I'm happy that we came across in this world. Could have been others, could have been in another situation, in another place, and I think is not a coincidence (I don't believe in them), we had to meet here in this exacly moment and I'm greateful that the destiny leaded me to live this incredible experience.

I aready miss you but I will never forget you.

You took a little piece of myself with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFlfSeh-Ts8

Things are not as they seem

One of the most learnt lessons in our lives is that things are not as they seem. He have heard this millions of times but from wise mouths but, it seems that not everyone ends up understanding the meaning of this lesson, and once again they fail in the same problem. Let’s put the stereotypes, the prejudice and the proud away!

People enter and go out of our lives almost every day. You never can know if someone you’ve just met is going to be your best friend, or the love of your life, or a person who will hurt you. Our problem is that the first impression, the “role” of that person, what others tell to us, is what counts.

As I said before, we live the most of the time with the eyes closed and we are not capable to see that the invisible things are the essential ones.

It’s so easy for us to crucify a person at the beginning and expel he/she from our lives. It’s so easy to create a wrong image of that person and convince ourselves that this person is like that… it’s only the selfishness of the human beings, our auto-defence, and the world we live in, a world that make us believe we should doubt about everything and about everyone.

We spend the most of the time making enquiries, filming movies in our brains, thinking about the future, thinking and supposing… and at the end we lose the best thing, the present.

Everyone is a box of surprises; never judge someone you’ve just met, you never know the reasons why that person is the way he/she is. Sometimes, if we manage to put the appearances away, we could discover a great surprise.

There are other times that we could discover something we don’t like and the surprise is bitter but, better a bitter surprise than keeping that “WHAT IF…” in our minds forever.

Ireland Survival Guide: The Weather

Ireland, the country I have adopted as my second homeland, and the one that has stolen my heart, and the one that I have learnt to love above the horrible weather, between other things.

Ireland, that piece of green land with the sky always cover with clouds.  Ireland, that place where the umbrella is not needed, because when it rains there is not poetic, it is a shower, When it snows, there is not cute, it is a blizzard. I cannot imagine what happens when it hails… the end of the world?

In Ireland you learn to value the sun, that yellow thing, nonexistent during the winter and that thing that plays “hide and seek” the whole day during the months of summer. And what can we do, the foreigners, to face this? Wearing layers and a big bag is always useful because even going to Tesco could be a challenge.

You go out, you look good, perfect hair, perfect makeup but it’s raining, doesn’t matter! put the hood on (remember the umbrella is not useful), 5 seconds later the rain has stopped and wow!, it’s sunny! Let’s take the coat out, but be careful, 10 seconds later the 50km/h wind has arrived, you cannot walk, put the coat on again. 

Finally you will arrive to the supermarket looking like a homeless person.

"How can I face this?" you ask yourself... well, the best option is going into a pub and mix with the Irish people. When you go out of the pub, feeling drunk and Irish, you will start watching things more beautiful. ;)

Madrid, where the life is a train that is about to leave

Putting on that song that brings you memories, after all, is the same as coming back to a place where you have been happy. There is no other feeling as the one when you come back to Madrid after been away for a long time. Take the car, put the music on and start to remember. I couldn’t come back to Dublin without writing about this wonderful city.

Christmas lights in Serrano st.

This is the city that has inspired many artists along time: musicians, writers, painters, photographers… because it has something, something special printed in the walls of these centenary buildings. Elegant, serious, classic, solemn, wise and experience as an old men that has a bunch of stories to tell.

Madrid is a city that doesn't forgive the memories. You can go for a year but when you come back those memories will come back to your mind as soon as you walk along its streets.

In every corner there is written a story, the story of the lives of its citizens. If you live in Madrid, you can't have a walk without remember some moment in that exact place. That story, in that place will always be written there.

You should never compare it with Barcelona, and is totally forbidden to do it in front of someone from Madrid. As you can’t compare Picasso with Velazquez, the same is with Madrid and Barcelona, you cannot compare the elegance of something classic, with the madness of something modern.

And now I'm back in Dublin, my second home, keeping in my mind the wonderful memories of this holidays in Madrid and ready to create new ones here.

365 days are gone, 366 new ones are comming

When a year is gone we have the habit of doing a balance of the last 365 days. Did I have a good year? A bad one? Did I fall in love? Did I meet new people and new friends? Did I live experiences?


For me the first question I make to myself is if I have lived every moment as if it was the last one. After all, I prefer to regret something that I did than something that I didn't.I think it's worse to live with that question arround our heads all the time: WHAT IF...?

Time goes fast and one day you wake up you have 40 or 50, you are married, you have 4 kids, you have an important job and your life is about responsibilities. In that moment you will look to the past and think: Did I enjoy life enough? Did I make all the things I wanted to do? Did I make the most of my time? I don't want to have 50 and discover I don't have anything interesting to teach to my sons and no good stories to tell to my grandsons.


As I told before, this years of our lifes will never come back, that's why we have to exploit them as more as we can. And today, the last day of the 2011, I hope you all smile when you remember that past moments of this year and I hope you have made unique every moment. If not, we have another 366 (not 365 because 2012 is a leap year) to do all the things we didn't do and we wanted to and to enjoy every second.


Happy new year to everyone!

Distance

After a long time I have realized how effective is The Distance in our lives. In this world of technology and globalization everything is connected and many people have dedicated their lives to shorten distances between human kinds.

However, there will never be any technology capable to reproduce the feeling of a hug (not for the moment). Because of this, we, the Erasmus people, only have the opportunity to communicate with those close to us via internet, through a screen, and also because of this, the distance has been always the best and the hardest proof to know who will stay by our side forever, and who doesn't.

When you are away living another life, nobody will understand how it is exactly, as I said before. However, when you come back the first impression is that nothing has changed, but in the deep you will discover little details that have been growing inside of that ones close to you. Some changes are good, some other, unfortunately, not. After all, as we have changed, things change also in our hometowns, and we are away to perceive it.

Distance is also something we all need, sometimes, time to think, time to discover what you miss and what you don’t. And in the end, if you miss it, is because is real.

But we are as we are, complicated, and we can’t see that the essential is always invisible to the eyes when we have it. When we lost it, or when we are away of it we realize how good it was, we realize we want it back and we start to value it. 

That little corner of paradise on earth...

The night has arrived to this little village in the coast of Alicante, but the nice weather lets me to be in the balcony, hanging off a hammock, with my cigarette and Kings of Leon in my iPhone. Four months later I come back to my favourite corner in the world and It’s amazing how this little moments are the ones that make us happier, and how I missed these moments of peace close to the beach.

Some say that you miss the things that you don’t have, and when you get them again you value them more. I think this is what happens every time I arrive here, and now more that I live in the most windy village in the whole Ireland.

I like when life is easy and simple here, no worries, no responsibilities, just sun, calm and peace. I missed the sun the most, my mother says I look like a sunflower, always with the face in direction to the sun but having it in the atmosphere for more than 1 hour, wow, I didn’t remember how it felts like!