Colby College, 18 years later

This is a simple post dedicated to Lydia, Sonia, Christina, Marta, Gilia, Ekaterina, Azeen, and of course to two of my best friends Alex and Roberto. Thanks at lot for your welcome and your time. My experience at Colby wouldn’t have been the same without your friendship.

Time had gone by fast, too fast and there I was again, in front of the building of the Miller Library but this time not accompanied by my cicerone Alex -“Do you see all this green? In a couple of months it would be covered by a thick layer of snow”, so it was- but by two young visitors: my sons Alejandro and Pablo… and 18 years later.

18 years later I was the cicerone. In front of the Miller Library, Colby College

March 30th, 1995. Studying long, long hours for the exams of the last year at the university, I receive a call: “Hola Domingo. Soy Javier, el coordinador de Colby en Salamanca. Simplemente decirte que los estudiantes te han escogido a ti. Si te interesa, el próximo curso estarás enseñando español en Colby College”. What a present for my 22nd birthday! I never counted on that and I never thought the year, which I was going to spend some months afterwards in the remote Waterville, ME, was going to have such a huge impact in my life.

Colby was something else and not only because of the responsability of teaching students older than you but also for what it supposed of growing up facing daily challenges in an environment new and different, in a time when the Internet was beginning taking off in the USA but in Spain was practically unknown. Just imagine: no Skype, just a couple of Spanish friends with e-mails. Fortunately it had to be so.

One couldn’t be the same after that: so many experiences, so many new faces, a car accident -number two, my dear Christina, Alex, and Roberto, so many chess games against professor Plotkin, so much cold, so much snow… I didn’t want to be the same after that.

Upon leaving Colby -thanks for the nice and last talk by the Johnson Pond, Gilia- I thought to myself it would be very unlikely I would be there again but future may give you some nice surprises. Living in Montreal, I couldn’t skip the chance of visiting again that place and meeting my good friends Lydia and Bob -what a nice weekend together! It was great to be there again, walk around the campus, stay in front of my old office in Lovejoy, be in Mary Low -Zini, I was about to stop by your place and ask you for the iron- and go through the catacombs to Coburn to visit the place in which my dear Greek and New Yorker friends and myself spent so many hours talking about Existencialism, Postmodernism, listening to David Brubeck from an old record player whilst sipping some nice coffee, eating pizza from WHOP, and above all fooling around.

Just a huge thank-you, my friends. Just one year but enough to model a whole life.

Mary Low, Colby College

And after a chicken grilla in Dana…

Lovejoy, Colby College