Familiarity.

Home away from home.

With all the recent talk of getting back on track and support systems and everything else, I’ve found myself really missing my family and friends! So, yesterday afternoon I sought out familiarity, and went into Madrid to go grab...a Starbucks! Yes, that was how I delt with my homesickness! Starbucks: a place where the carbs in the chocolate chip muffin I ate are exactly the same as the carbs in the chocolate chip muffins in England have (around 63g of carbs, if you're wondering); where I can get my standard grande, skinny, decaf latte and know it is going to taste amazing; where I feel like I’m at “home” even when I’m not at home (Starbucks is my preferred coffee shop, that is all!)

I know that the feeling will pass, but it doesn’t make it any easier now. I skyped one of my housemates at the weekend and it was so, so good to properly catch up with her. We skyped for a good three hours, and I’m pretty sure if she didn’t have work to do and it wasn’t around 3am Spanish time, we could have kept on going! Oh, where would we be without modern technology, eh?!

Year abroad is great, don’t get me wrong! I am incredibly grateful for having the opportunity to live and study abroad, not only in one country, but in two. I’ve been able to spend 4 months living in France, and I will end up living in Spain for about 5 months by the time I've finished my exams here! Pretty amazing if you ask me! And the travelling opportunites I've had, and will have, are incredible: lived in Toulouse, visited Bordeaux and Clermont Ferrand, lived in Alcalá de Henares, visited Madrid, plan on visiting Granada, Alicante, Salamanca. I've really caught the travelling-bug and I'm loving it. But then I miss the stability of having a permanent home. I'm pretty much living out of a suitcase, and no where has been home for more than 6 months. That's hard. I like stability, and for that reason I am very glad the year abroad is just that: a year. 

I can't wait to see what the next few months bring (hopefully stable sugar levels are up there!) but I also can't wait to get back to the UK, back to Norwich, back home, where I have my friends and family, the diabetes clinic (never missed spending time at the diabetes clinic until now!), and just a general feeling of permanence.