It’s been quiet around here for a while. I’ve been waiting for some breaking news to mark my blog comeback. I’m not giving too much away when I say it never came. What might sound so wonderfully unspectacular at first is mainly because Tenerife has become something of a second home to me. Everything here feels very familiar. I fell in love with this island, the people, and life here a long time ago. And what can I say: so far, this love hasn’t waned, even though our dreaded seventh year is still ahead of us.
Fingers crossed
Speaking of love: It only took a few days before I met my first crush on the island. Or whatever you call it. Even though it’s definitely not going to turn into anything serious in this case, I enjoyed feeling that crush again. It clearly shows that where many people expect to find a big chunk of stone, a heart can sometimes beat a little faster. Even if, admittedly, that “butterfly feeling” only comes around very rarely. An ex-girlfriend of mine once gave me the following piece of advice:
“I know you love me. But in your own way.”
And that pretty much sums up how I deal with emotions in every respect. While others rack their brains trying to figure out which of the love languages they speak best, most of it feels like spanish for me (in Germany, we say either “That sounds Spanish to me” or “I understand train station only”, do not ask me why).
And that brings us to my progress in Spanish. Brilliant transition, right? To sum it up: I’m not making as much progress as I’d like. I can tell that I’m understanding and reading more and more. But speaking? A spontaneous conversation is hardly possible, even though my good friend and Spanish teacher Rebeca tells everyone they should speak Spanish with me. Either she really has that much faith in me or she’s vastly overestimating her skills as a Spanish teacher. I don’t mean the latter in a bad way. On the contrary, she’s the best and most patient Spanish teacher I could have found. But to give you a better idea of my level: we recently watched Peppa Pig in Spanish, and as I write this, I’m listening to a playlist of Spanish songs on repeat. In the present tense. Because I can’t do the past tense yet…
Another reason why things had been quiet around me was definitely my energy level. While South Africa somehow felt invigorating, I had the opposite feeling in Morocco. The language barrier and my frantic escape from Marrakesh had somehow worn me out. To make matters worse, I’d had two rough months during which I’d started smoking again. While in South Africa it still felt somehow so easy to smoke a cigarette with a beer, in Morocco I quickly realized how the cigarette had me and my daily rhythm back in its grip. And although all the side effects and that unwelcome feeling of being controlled by others quickly returned (according to the zodiac description, we Aquarians hate being controlled by others), every attempt to quit failed due to the addiction, just as had been the case so often before I quit nearly 2.5 years ago.
Once a junkie, always a junkie.
It’s been a month—since I arrived in Tenerife—and I’ve been “clean” ever since, without even thinking about smoking once. I can feel my energy levels returning, and all the side effects are slowly fading away.
To everyone who was worried: I'm doing fine. In fact, I'm doing great. I'm looking forward to my second month on the island and will be sharing updates here before I set off on new adventures…
