Farewells

Things about this house I will miss:

- Pillowfights with the girls
- Watching Skins with Eva in the kitchen late at night
- Coming home in the late afternoons to coffee, chocolate, cookies and conversation with Olga
- Baking, Spanish-style: "Oh, just add some more olive oil, it'll be fine."
- The realization and subsequent amazement that I followed the entire conversation at dinner
- Explaining slang/pop culture references in the current Top 20 (the Most Perplexing Song Award goes to "Tik Tok" for containing "crunk", "Mick Jagger", etc.)
- Sharing clothes, makeup and fashion advice
- Helping Violeta with math homework (it is totally not the same in every language, but on the other hand now I know how to do simple math in Spanish)
- After-dinner walks around the neighborhood with the girls

It took a while for me to truly adapt to my role here, as sort-of-sister-sort-of-aunt to the girls and sort-of-daughter-sort-of-sister to Olga. At the beginning there was the inevitable over-politeness and tiptoeing around, on both my part and theirs - certainly not unfriendliness, just a cautious acknowledgment that the other has different ideas and preconceived notions of what a "home" is and the attempts to understand the unknown norms that seem foreign and utterly strange to you. In the past few months, however, the politeness has morphed into a teasing familiarity and the warm comfort of security. Even Eva - the oldest daughter and most reserved in the house - has opened up and no longer needs her sister as a buffer. They have all, at this point, told me independently that they don't want me to leave.

Goodbyes are always hard, in any language.

Edit: Completely unrelated, but if you have been following what's been going on in Britain for the past week at all, you'll find this pretty hilarious (or, at least, I did, but then I'm not actually British, so there you go).