We walked barefoot on the beach, the water shrill against our skin. It was night, the glow of the boardwalk smudged against a starless sky, the blaring electronic music from the clubs dimly pulsing in the wind. A certain weight carried ev- ery footstep; it was our last weekend in Barcelona.

We headed to a small Catalan concert featuring a folk rock band. We couldn’t understand a word of the songs, but we followed the motions of the crowd. There were times when we were swaying and times when we were kicking in rhythm and times when we were throwing our fists into the air before falling to the floor. At the end of the concert, we each received a sheet of paper to make a paper airplane, and when the chorus hit, the air was full of them, criss-crossing and nose diving.

The keyboardist spoke fluent English, and when she greeted me she kissed me once on each cheek. I did the same to my host mom as a goodbye.

“Buenos viajes, la pequeña,” said Nury, my host mom. She called me “la pequeña” for the entirety of the semester, whether because my name was too hard to pronounce or because she simply couldn’t remember.

Sitting in the Newark, New Jersey air- port surrounded by English and familiarity felt just as shocking to me as first arriving in Barcelona. It was that pervasive sense of being out of place, the feeling that I’d managed to eclipse with excitement and even monotony during my time abroad.

The metro ride from my homestay to class became as natural to me as walking across campus at Wofford. I found myself letting hours slip away under the rim of a coffee mug.

Before we left, we climbed to the top of the Bunkers del Carmel, the abandoned remnants of an anti-aircraft initiative dur- ing the Spanish Civil War. From the top was a 360° view of Barcelona, and groups of young people sat on the edges of the bunkers, bottles of wine between them. At night, the city was a sea of glowing lights and dimly lit channels.

The Ferris wheel at the top of Mt. Tibidabo glimmered purple and red. Spot- lights from Plaça Espanya fanned into the sky, where we watched the Magic Fountains ignite like a volcano-eruption turned-waterfall while crowds of children cheered for encores and elderly tour- ists struggled to hold their iPads straight enough to record the footage.

There were myths of drinking water from the fountains at the end of Las Ramblas: anyone who drank the water would someday return to Barcelona. But on my last day in Barcelona, Las Ramblas was crowded with people celebrating Sant Jordi, the festival of roses and books. There was no way to reach the fountain, even if I’d wanted to.