Reflections on the last year

Since last September, I've been seriously considering whether I want to continue living in Madrid. (Spoiler alert: I haven´t made any decisions.) I´m quite sure I don´t want to live in a city of six million for the rest of my life, but weighing the factors of city size, weather, the prevailing culture, language, along with tax and visa options, is a complicated process. I don´t have any particular deadline, but I feel some impetus to decide within the next year, mainly because I want to start living whatever life I´m choosing sooner rather than later. I do feel like I have been making progress - I have visited possible cities and countries, investigated immigration laws, and started learning a new language. At each point, it´s been pretty clear what are the next two or three steps I need to take, and I´ll just continue until the right decision seems obvious.

In the meantime, I have been reflecting on my three years thus far in Spain. Moving to a new country is hard. I knew that even before I came, and I came prepared to be lonely and bewildered. And I certainly was, although with diminishing frequency as I learned both the language and how Spain works. So although I feel apprehension about possibly starting over in a new country and a new language, I am also appreciative of how easy my life is now. Three years in, it's quite rare that I encounter a new rule / holiday / life admin problem that I don't know how to deal with. With my B2** level in Spanish, I can generally communicate in any situation, even if I still sometimes sound like an idiot. I've made a huge number of friends in my choir, which means I feel like I have a strong support network and ample opportunities for socialization. I don´t know what the future holds, but the present is a pretty good place for me to be.

** That's level 4 of 6 in the Common European Framework for languages, described as, “Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.”