Yes, this is surreal to me. For how long have I pictured my life like this, my family in a situation that is both wholly unique and someone daunting with each moment? Doubt, like the Queen’s Guards, has stood stolidly by my side from the moment I accepted this position. Now it hovers only lightly, more of an irritating mosquito buzzing about my ears at night, continuously waking me and yet impossible to find, to squash. I am here, and things are going well, better than I could have dreamed, with tutoring positions so easy to find that I am at the point of working well into the night (“You know, we Spaniards like to go to bed at twelve or one”) or having to turn people away. So we’re safe, secure, in a better position than we have been in months. We can stop the ticking on our credit card bill, pay for the necessities of life, perhaps even have a bit extra for a weekend trip to Barcelona or a day trip in a rental car to the beach.

It’s the small things, the GIANT small things, that get in the way. My girls’ school, my last choice, with the bars on the windows, the gate that keeps out outsiders, my oldest getting top scores in science and math on day four in a country where the language isn’t her native tongue?? The looks that cross others’ faces when I say the name of the school. When I tell them the part of town we live in. Irony is my best friend. After nine years of teaching ESL to poor immigrants who can’t afford to live in a nice neighborhood, own a car, or go to the best school, I am now one of those poor immigrants. I walk with the “Moors” (as they DO call them here) to the school. I try to argue with the Spaniards about Arabic/Mideastern students I’ve had in the States, how respectful they are, how dedicated to their studies. But no, not these, they respond. These people are poor, uneducated, don’t know Spanish, making the whole school have to dumb everything down… Boy have I heard that one before. Sounds a little like the world works the same no matter where you go. But what, at this point, can I do? Am I putting my girls in a bad situation where they will lose a year of good education? Should I still search for a different school and then lay down another exorbitant stash of cash on books I cannot afford?

Then remorse creeps up… I think about my last month at home, my sheer panic of unemployment, my frantic search for online jobs… that I wasted, all for naught. All the things I could have been doing, the people I could have spent my time with… sometimes I let my inherent sense of responsibility and control get the best of me. But then I play devil’s advocate for myself when I think, I did this to my family, and I had to find a way to make it work… I just wish I could have seen into the future, to know that things would be OK. I didn’t realize I’d be about the only American to step into this city where no one has even HEARD of Colorado, and are all in love with the idea of having an American teach them English!

And fear, fear stands by my side even as I walk around a new block, take in the view of a new apartment building that faces the mountains, see a new beauty I didn’t see the day before… fear is always there. Who is here to be at our back, to look out for us when we’re sad, to catch us when we’re ready to fall? We have done this almost wholly on our own from day one, and it hasn’t been easy. With me being the only one able to communicate, and my Spanish being nowhere near the level it needs to be to complete the most important tasks of setting up a home and getting my children properly educated, I fear what will come next as new challenges creep up. How alone will we find ourselves as time goes on?

I have so many emotions standing by my side, hovering around me as I face the world with the happiness and relief that are also there. All I can hope, as I go through each day, is that the exuberance, the surrealism, will never wear off, that I can pounce out my doubt, remorse, and fear and make this into the dream it was meant to be.