Marisa’s abroad in Madrid, Spain, until Dec. 19.

Phew! Finally a moment to myself. Although, I must say, I’m only feigning exasperation. My parents have been in Spain since Friday, and I’ve been playing tour guide basically 24/7 since then, which has been a bit time-consuming and exhausting. As my mom always says, quoting her dad: “Being a tourist is hard work.” But it really has been great having them in town, not just because I get to show off my Spanish and show them the city I’ve been living in for the past few months, but because I realized I really did miss them. Before they came, I didn’t really feel homesick and wasn’t too worried about having not seen my parents in a while. But having them here reminded me of all the comforts of home and I really have started to feel a bit homesick lately; not too much, but just enough so that I’m getting ready to go home and will definitely be ready by December 19.

I flew to Barcelona to meet them on Friday, and we visited all of the requisite Gaudi sites, as well as the historic center. Probably the coolest thing was in the Museum of the History of the City, which doesn’t sound like it holds much potential but was surprisingly awesome: The basement level was a maze of Roman ruins from ancient Barcino, as Barcelona was called in Roman days, buried underneath the building site. We literally strolled through part of the ancient Roman town, taking in sites like the wine-making facility, the bathhouse, and the place where they made a sort of fish relish out of rotten fish guts. Mmmmm.

We also found out about the Montecito, CA fire on CNN in our hotel room after a day of sightseeing: Over 200 homes burned, including those of two high school friends, and countless families I know were evacuated as the fire approached their homes. Then we heard about the LA fire, which was in The Valley, near where many of my relatives live. Scary. It’s so surreal to be across the world as things like that happen. Life goes on at home, but I feel so detached in my little foreign bubble.

Back in Madrid, we’ve been hitting the main tourist sites; it has been a really great excuse for me to do some more touring, which I sort of stopped doing after the first few weeks once I had been to most of the obvious places and wanted to stop feeling like a tourist. We took a walking tour of the old city, something I probably never would have thought to do (it’s less obvious than it is in some other European cities… much of the “old city” now houses modern businesses and homes, with historic sites interspersed throughout). We also took a day trip to nearby El Escorial and will be going to Salamanca on Friday. I also have yet to go to the Prado –let’s just say art museums aren’t my thing– so this is the perfect time to knock that off my list, and I have my dad there to commiserate with if I get bored.

But I wasn’t the only one excited about my parents’ arrival. Dorita, my senora, has been cleaning the house for weeks and insisted on having them over for dinner last night. She was so cute and cooked all sorts of tapas, which were actually decent and much better than most of what we are normally fed. My mom speaks a little Spanish so she was able to hold a conversation with a little help from me translating some of the rapid-fire Spanish coming out of Dorita’s mouth. My dad, on the other hand, had no idea what was going on.

Overall, the last few days have been full of delicious meals out, plenty of sightseeing, catching up with my parents, and lots of See’s Candy and Trader Joe’s Vanilla-Almond granola (goodies from home…I have been NEEDING my “Just the Clusters” for my yogurt). What they haven’t been filled with is studying and I had a midterm today. Fortunately, BU in Madrid is not actually anything like Northwestern. Or middle school, for that matter. So for now I will enjoy the last few days with my parents, and then I will be making the most of my last four weeks here. I can’t believe it’s almost over, but the beginning also seemed so long ago. Suddenly winters in Evanston are looking even less appealing than they were before I knew about this magical thing called study abroad in Madrid…

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