After living in Spain for 2 years, coming home for the summer has been a culture shock. Getting
used to driving again, air conditioning, garbage disposals, dryer machines, gigantic coffee cups,
paying tax on top of the shelf price, the variety in all the grocery stores.
Add to that the feeling of losing my independence after living alone, and
you get a recipe for a very difficult adjustment. Historically, when I've come home from college,
I end up very sad and unmotivated. And this summer I'm spending a total of 9 weeks at home,
so I knew it could go badly, and therefore, I prepared. As soon as I got home, I was like:
no time to waste, chop chop, let's get moving. I unpacked my luggage, first of all,
because living out of a suitcase is the absolute worst. And I organized everything, inventoried it,
put it where it belongs. I've been waking up here at around 6:30 in the morning,
which is just slightly earlier than I would wake up in Segovia, that's mainly because the
sun rises here much earlier and so it's easier to wake up naturally. In Spain, I was seeing a LOT
of sunrises because it was almost always dark when I woke up, so this is a very nice change.
So I do my morning routine, which as you know, has been the same since the beginning of time,
I stretch, I take a cold shower, I journal, and I plan for the day. And then I have breakfast,
which, if you're not new to this channel, you know I also have the same breakfast every single day.
It's funny the little differences that you notice after you've been living alone and then you come
back home. I had to get used to the fact that my dad likes to put the salt on the very top shelf,
whereas I like to have it on the kitchen counter, because I'm short. But it's okay,
I can adapt. After I've had my coffee and worked on the crossword, also on the Wordle,
the Mini Crossword, and the new game they just put out, Connections, I have way too much to do
in the mornings now. After all of that, I like to get to work. So there are a lot of things
that I wanna do this summer, and I'm always most focused in the mornings, so I wanna take
advantage of that time. So I gather my essentials. In the morning I usually work on scripting a video
or writing a newsletter, just anything else that takes a lot of focused thinking. I've
also been working on a guide for the Music Club, which I was Communications Manager of last year,
so I'm like writing a guide for whoever is taking over my job next year. And I'm also
currently in the middle of applying for this internship, so those are my morning projects.
I'm gonna take a break from working and talk to you instead! I've got a bunch of habits that I'm
trying to stick to this summer to stay productive and cheerful. Some of them are new, like going to
a coffee shop once a week, practicing French, or working in another room of the house. Others are
old classics that you'll recognize from other videos, like taking a cold shower, journaling,
taking my vitamins, and drinking water. Water has always been on my list of habits, I am a
water FIEND. And that is because when I was in elementary school (elementary school through like
middle school) I would get these ocular migraines pretty regularly, where basically I would get a
blind spot in my vision and it would grow and grow and my head would hurt, and all sorts of not fun
stuff. But then, once I started drinking water, I mean- I drank water before, I just never like
took it seriously, so I never drank enough... They went away, like I can't remember the last
time I had a migraine, THANKFULLY. So now I always drink one full bottle of water before breakfast,
I'm known to also carry around my water bottle everywhere. That is why I was super excited to
try out the LARQ Flip Top water bottle! Thank you LARQ for sponsoring this video. This is the 25oz
bottle in "Seaside Mint". I am nowhere near a seaside right now, but at least I can feel like
I'm by the ocean. First of all, the bottle is beautiful. I feel like, subconsciously,
when I'm out and about, I just wanna drink more from it to *show it off*. The flip-up sip straw
is also extremely important to me because the majority of my water consumption takes place
while I'm working. I literally just have my water bottle in front of me and I'm sip sip sipping
hands-free like a little gerbil or something. An extra feature that can be bought separately that I
love is the PureVis bottle cap. This neutralizes up to 99% of contaminants that might be in your
water. I don't even have to think about, because it automatically activates every 2 hours,
and to charge it I just plug it into my computer and it lasts for up to a month. As you know,
I study in Spain but my family still lives in the US, so I'm traveling a lot, I'm in a lot
of airports, and so it's very important to me to know that my water is always gonna be clean AND,
also, this keeps your water cold for up to 24 hours, so I know that I can always cool down
in the super hot Spanish weather. You can click the link in the description to check out the LARQ
Flip Top water bottle, and also check out all of the other hydration products that they offer. And
my Pomodoro break is definitely over, so I'm gonna get back to work. I love lunchtime. Last semester,
I mostly had morning classes so when I came back for lunch at my apartment, that was my
time to unwind and recharge my social battery. So I've sort of tried to recreate that here, it's
just important to me that I don't rush through lunch to get back to work, so I always schedule
more time for lunch in my calendar blocking than I think I'll need, so then I can eat,
I might go outside with my brother and pick some black currants, cause those are in season in our
backyard right now. Or finish up the crossword, if I didn't do that in the morning. Sometimes,
I use that to answer the daily Agapé. So this is a relationship wellness app that me and my boyfriend
started using because we are apart for the summer and we were like "there's gotta be an app for
that" (and there was!). So basically every day we answer a question from one of these categories.
Today it was: "Is there anything coming up you would like to prepare for as a couple?
What would you like to do?" You can't see your partner's response until you've submitted yours,
and it's been surprisingly insightful and fun. I am proud to say we have a 52-day streak now.
In addition to that, we text every day, we try to call every day. Obviously it's hard because
there's a big time zone difference, but we try our best and there's only a month left until we close
that distance. In the afternoon, I usually work on something that takes a little less mental energy,
like filming a video or editing a video. I've been trying to stay active, because I notice my mood
correlates so so much with my activity levels, and I've been pretty successful at sticking to it,
I think because I've been incorporating a lot of variety and not pressuring myself too much about,
just really trying to have fun with it. Sometimes I'll do like a quick workout in my room,
I really like the Fitness Blender channel, if you want recommendations. Sometimes I go to the
gym with my family. I've been trying to go on more walks, so overall, just keeping it varied.
I am very introverted and I need SO MUCH alone time to recharge my batteries. So I'm super
grateful that I have a room to myself here to escape to whenever I need. You might have seen
on some of my other platforms that I actually decided to paint my room. So, half of the walls
in here used to be white and half of them were black, and I just painted over everything in
like a warm tone of white, so that has helped me feel a lot better in my room, it's a lot brighter
now. But something that's still very difficult to adjust to is that I can no longer walk everywhere
that I want. I live in an extremely car-dependent place, whereas in Segovia, I could walk anywhere,
like I could leave my apartment whenever I wanted, because I lived alone, I didn't even have to tell
anyone where I was going. The nearest coffee shop was a 2-minute walk away. If I needed anything
from the grocery store, that was just 6 minutes away. Everything was so easy! But now you need a
car to get anywhere, and we also share the car so I have to plan and make sure the car is available
for wherever I. wanna go. But I'm still trying to go out and see my friends or go to coffee
shops instead of always sitting in my room, to feel that sense of agency over my location. Also
something that I've had to get used to, and I don't know if you can relate to this, but when
my parents ask me where I'm going, or like who I'm having lunch with, or how long I'll be there,
for some reason that really bothers me, because I'm just not used to having to tell anyone where
I'm going or what I'm doing or how long I'll be there. And so even though it's a perfectly
harmless question and they have the right to know and it's- the answer is not something that
I'm trying to hide, it's not a secret. It just feels like an intrusion of my privacy, even though
it's not. So I have to sort those feelings out within myself, and learn how to deal with that.
Dinner time! I cook and eat somewhat differently in Spain than I do at home, so one thing I've
consciously done is bring dishes that I often made in Spain, like hand-pulled noodles, and making
them for my family in Wisconsin, which has been a lovely bonding activity, and also just makes
me feel like I'm at "home". We gotta put that back in there, man. It's chilling on the floor.
I've been reading a lot more, which feels amazing, I've been watching Jeopardy with
my family. Also House Hunters, Shark Tank, all my little cute favorite reality shows
and game shows. And then when it's time for sleep, I love going to my room and
turning the fairy lights on so it's all cozy. I open the window at night for some fresh air,
and listen to some quiet music while I journal and stretch. Getting to a point where you feel
like you have 2 homes can suck, because then you feel homesick for both places, and that
just doubles the emotional pain. But it can also be really nice, because you can enjoy being in
both of your homes. When I arrived in Wisconsin this summer, I kept thinking "I wanna go home,
I wanna go home" and Spain was the "home" now. But, I've gotten to a point now, where,
because of being very intentional about how I spend my time here, I'm actually really excited
to spend the rest of my summer here, and I'm also really excited to go to Madrid. Like,
I'm just excited about everything that's coming up and I think that is the best place to be. So
the vibes are good, I feel very grateful for the life I'm living, and for my two homes <3