A Sentimental Journey... there and back again.

We're back! Spain and Morocco treated us royally but we're happy to return to our old dreary flat on Archery road. Leeds is remarkably quiet today. The undergrads and most of the graduate students have all gone home. Christmas music jingles eerily in the empty student union hall. The computer lab is que-less and all the books I need and want are sitting obediently on their shelves in the Brotherton library. It's kind of nice really... though I maintain that the city center doesn't feel right without the usual throng of raucous costumed teenagers. 

My very favorite souvenir from our journey is a book of Cristina Peri Rossi's that I bought in a dusty bookshop off the main drag in Malaga. I read Peri Rossi for the first time in English in Dr. Weathers' class nearly three years ago and loved her. I wish I could jump right into this one, but have to finish papers before my sister visits. So, until then, Por fin Solos sits on my own bookshelf reminding me of my vow of eventual Iberian fluency. 

Happily Zach and I will spend Christmas week housesitting for one of his professors in a tiny village called Mytholmroyd, near the quaint and quirky Hebden Bridge. We're looking forward to central heating, double-paned windows, and feline housemates... luxuries of the academic life? The little sojourn, I hope, will make us feel better about missing our first Christmas with family. But as the day looms, I wish for one more year abroad so that I can fully participate in the festivities and literary culture of England/Europe outside the limitations of being a student. Maybe next year?...