Our Spainiversary {Year 4}

We have officially been in Spain for four years and we still absolutely love it.  We have one more year left but we hope (and pray) we can stay for a little bit longer, if at least just to let Serafina finish the school year next year.  You can catch up on year three here, year two here, and year one here.

It seems crazy to me that we have lived here for four years.  Some days it seems like we left the states yesterday and some days it seems like we have always lived here.  It is the only life that Serafina really knows and remembers.  Trevor and I are both a little worried about how Serafina will adjust when we move back, but we also know she is strong and will adapt.  We do hope to continue her Spanish when we head back to the states....

But about our time in Spain -- this past year we have had to chance to immerse ourselves in the town and culture even more, especially with Serafina's first year of Spanish public school.  We have loved meeting new people, going to birthday parties, being a part of town events and more.  Serafina has flourished with her Spanish friends (and her Spanish has really taken off).  We love seeing classmates out and about in town -- we live in such a small town that we see someone we know (from swimming or school) almost everywhere we go and it is so much fun.  We all get to practice our Spanish and we love being a part of this amazing community. 

We have traveled a lot more this past year as well, crossing off some bucket list items for all of us.  Our goal was to see new countries and we sure succeeded -- I started off the year with traveling to Croatia with some friends.  And then we took an amazing road trip through Portugal in April, sealing our love for that particular country.  We finally got to Scotland (more here too) and we all loved it -- it was easily one of the most gorgeous countries we had ever seen.  We also took the most epic trip to the Baltic countries last summer.  We were gone for two weeks and it was hands down one of the best trips we have ever done -- we saw the Baltic countries and also took Serafina to the original Legoland in Denmark which our little lady still talks about.  We explored more of our adopted home country, going north to Bilboa + the Basque Country and finally seeing Barcelona.  And then another highlight of the year was getting back to Florence after SO many years (Trevor and I both studied there and were so excited to go back).  A huge highlight for me was going to Turkey with some friends in January -- seriously, this easily became one of my most favorite places in the whole world.  We are so lucky to be able to travel while living here, especially using the budget airlines and traveling for very cheap!

We still manage to have fun with our friends here -- sadly we did have to say goodbye to many good friends last year.  It is always so hard for all of us, especially since Serafina keeps asking to play with friends who have moved.  It can be hard to explain to a young kiddo.  We live in a small community and many of our American friends live within walking distance of our house so we see them often, especially in the summer when we all meet at the beach almost every single weekend.  It can be hard for our change hating kiddo to all of a sudden no longer see her best buddies on a weekly basis.  But despite the goodbyes, we still have the most amazing group of friends who have become our family.
None of us are ready for this to be our last year here, but we know it has to end at some point.  Trevor and I have always wanted to live abroad and we could have never even imagined how amazing it would actually be -- we are so lucky and thankful to have had this opportunity.  And we look forward to this next (and most likely last) year in Spain...