PARIS!, LOS-ANGELES!, BARCELONA!, PANAMA CITY!, BOCA-RATON: FLORIDA!, PORT-AU-PRINCE: HAITI!, MONTEGO BAY: JAMAICA…!!!
Indeed, as most of my sisters are presently based in different cities in France of which: Paris and Metz, I spent some New Year’s Eves either with them and relatives or they have been coming to spend it at my sister’s home in New Jersey (which is only thirty minutes away by car from New York City). Four years ago, I had to absolutely use my airline ticket which was about to expire as a year was about to reach its end. I had initially purchased my airline ticket, to fly out to witness a cousin’s wedding in Spain. Most unfortunately, a close family member who lived with me at the time, fell ill and I had to attend to her and forego attending my cousin’s wedding. (As an important sidebar note, we MUST always prioritize the family members, relatives and friends we are/and feel closest to over any leisure travel, entertainment & hobbies we had initially planned as one never knows when it sadly is too late…)! I was/and still Very Much Am extremely busy with my various projects and endeavors , that I totally did not pay attention to planning for a new trip with that ticket (as I did in fact travel for work to a few places nationally-within the states). When I realized that the deadline for me to use the mileage for a new trip, a new year was only a month away…!!!
As a very young adult, right out of Undergraduate School in the states with my Bachelors’s degree in Arts & Sciences (as I majored in English & American Litterature with a minor in Social Studies and Latin Languages (Spanish & French) in hand and with the “Cum Laude” Honors, I had already decided that I would spend about a full year in Spain, to really be able to master Spanish absolutely fluently like my oldest sister whom my Dear mother had sent to spend an entire Summer (three months) in Salamanca, Spain so that she could absolutely become fluent in Spanish prior to graduating from high school. (We were living in France at the time and all schools in France offered wither Spanish or German as a second foreign language , starting in the 8th grade since English is still the mandatory first language commencing in the 6th grade). I just cannot type and express here below, how envious I was of my sister when she returned in the Fall, speaking and writing Spanish absolutely perfectly (LOL…)! I guess looking back today that if I was already motivated to become fluent in Spanish like my sister as teenager, my envy and admiration of listening to my oldest sister just talk away in Spanish, most assuredly reinforced my own teenage will! But I do digress here, as I often do on blogs…
INSERT PICTURE HERE from MAJORCA, SPAIN