Trevor Huxham

Now that I’m back home with my parents in Texas this summer, I’ve recently been leafing through all the old travel journals that I kept when I moved to Spain and traveled around Europe. They’ve put me in a real emotional mood remembering how excited I felt to be moving to a foreign country. At the same time, all my old anxieties came flooding back: what city would I live in, what apartment would I choose, how would I get to work, would I make any friends, and what the heck comes next after all of this is over. View this post on Instagram It's always sunny in Santiago...at least this month ☀️😏☀️ // #sun #santiago #santiagodecompostela #baroque #church #cathedral #galicia #spain #visitspain #whitagram #snapseed #latergram A post shared by Trevor Huxham (@trevorhuxham) on May 23, 2015 at 1:55pm PDT It’s now been three years  since I landed on the tarmac at the Barajas airport in Madrid , giddy and jetlagged a...

This past Thursday, people on the Facebook groups for language assistants in Spain began posting elatedly that they had heard back from the Spanish government about getting placed in a region for the 2015-2016 school year. The placements started rolling in: Andalucía, Madrid, Castilla y León, and even an odd first-year getting placed alongside the priority renewals . I always enjoy the exciting atmosphere in the groups during this time of the year, as everyone is either simply euphoric at the opportunity to work in Spain or thrilled that they finally got assigned in their dream region. View this post on Instagram Blooming magnolias are pretty much my favorite thing of all time. 😍🌷 // #flowers #magnolias #spring #santiago #santiagodecompostela #galicia #spain #vsco #vscocam A post shared by Trevor Huxham (@trevorhuxham) on Mar 11, 2015 at 12:27pm PDT This begs the question: are you renewing for another year, T...

At the Texas State Fair I miss the sounds of: Crickets as they keep vigil through the night, their whistly sopranos petering out and being replaced by the next in turn The Doppler effect of the lawnmower as it passes by my bedroom window, and the calm relief that returns after it shuffles off Squirrels thumpety-thump-thumping across the roof The bright, bouncy cry of the cardinal The whooshing of the trees as they all clap their hands to welcome in an imminent thunderstorm, or the lazy flicker of leaves rustling together on a balmy, breezy day Thunder in all its forms: the uhhh-I-don’t-wanna-get-out-of-bed-Mom grumbles, far off in the distance—the basketball that bumps from one carpeted stair step to another—the large fart denied a way out of the bowels—the kind that shifts between rumble and boom that makes you wonder if it’s gonna be A Big One—the bedroom door slammed by an angsty teenager that makes the bookshelf fall over and spill all the books and knick-knacks on...

Waaaaay back in July when I started this blog after finding out I would be spending 8 months as a language assistant at a bilingual elementary school in southern Spain, I wrote a post entitled “5 Things I’m Looking Forward to About Spain.” Looking back on that time in my life, I now realize how little I knew of Spanish life, although I have enjoyed all five things on the list throughout the year. That stretch of time, however, has made me mildly homesick and longing for specific things about America. So here are seven of them I am looking forward to enjoying and taking advantage of when I return in June. TEXAS 1) Family and friends Don’t get me wrong—the Internet has made staying in touch extremely  easy and completely changed the dynamics of moving abroad with Facebook and Skype. But there’s nothing quite like physical face-to-face human contact, replete with hugs and fragrances, contact that doesn’t depend on a sketchy WiFi connection to have a conversation. This doesn’...

These past seven months living abroad in Spain and working as a language assistant have been one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve embraced the challenge of living on my own for the first time, I’ve enjoyed getting to travel to places I’ve dreamed of for years, and I’ve gotten to practice and (I hope) advance my command of the Spanish language. Villanueva del Arzobispo, the village where I work I was extremely fortunate to find a job—any job—just four months after graduating from college (“in this economy,” to use a clichéd phrase), and I was even more fortunate to get placed by the Spanish Ministry of Education in a really lovely school with a carpool so I could live in the World Heritage-listed town of Úbeda, famous for its Renaissance architecture. Here in Úbeda I’ve made friends with some amazing fellow language assistants and honed my blogging and photography skills. I’ve learned to cook for myself and even picked up a few Spanish recipes along the way. Separate...