It's My Birthday!!

Just last week, I celebrated a very big event: MY BIRTHDAY!!! okay, it really is my anniversary in Barcelona, but I can't help feeling it was a little like my birthday. Having come to Barcelona in many ways has been a rebirth of sorts, where I got to try something new, create a new life, meet new people and see what I would be like in a new world, with a different language and different traditions, routines, and faces. I have to admit to myself and all of you that it has been an amazing experience and what I have created has been surprising, fulfilling and exciting, along with scary, hard (emotionally), and challenging, but I now can say I have lived a full year in a foreign country and survived, while meeting some of the most amazing people in the world.

Unfortunately, some very important people were missing this past Friday, but it goes without saying, that although they weren't there, their names came up constantly and I couldn't help but recognize how much these beautiful faces have influenced me here, have inspired me and have cheered me up and on to keep doing what I am doing. And so in appreciation I cooked them up a meal, we drank wine, chatted and went out dancing until the wee hours of the night. Earlier that week, I had time to reflect on what I have done this last year and I am very proud that I have checked off yet another dream off my list and am still working hard on working on the rest. This I see as only a beginning. There is still so much more to conquer and experience. Time continues to pass by and I could easily see another year go by, or two, who knows and who cares, what matters is when you don't stop dreaming and feeling, both the good and the bad. Luckily the bad has been miniscule compared to the good and no one can take that away from me. As I prepared the meal on Friday and heard all those voices around me, as I watched those I have learned to easily love dance all night, I felt so full inside and so happy to have met them. They are my family and team.

And so here I am, one year later, marking my footsteps, forming new families and experiences and looking forward to what another year can offer me in Spain. Travel? Friendships that distance will never tear? Success at work and writing? Only I can define it, because only I have the power to choose and just like it is up to me to make those dreams come true, it is up to you to keep your own dreams alive and to never let the little things in life stop the big ones from growing.

No me arrepiento...has been my motto this year.