Longest Way Round Is the Shortest Way Home

I started out this blog and my trip to Spain a short (and at the same time, really long) three months ago with this in mind:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Eliot

This idea is not new or anything, but I thought of my trip as a spiral staircase -- going towards a greater understanding, but maybe not really changing my position. TS Eliot said it better. Anyway, this has already proven true! Kind of. Remember this picture I posted a few weeks ago, in an end of quarter homework rush?It bears a strong resemblance to this picture I took right before I left for Spain. It is all the books that I failed to read this summer.(Beloved and the one below it are really my mother's)

Maybe this is more a sign of my habit of stacking books than of any real ascent on the staircase. But I find myself in the same places, beginning to imagine what life in Cape Town will be like, just like 3 months ago I couldn't fathom Madrid.
I can say that I think I've learned a lot about myself and my position in the world through being here, although I can't say that anything has really changed. I would say at the least that I feel older and that I can sort of understand a Spanish sort of logic, a different way of processing information. (At the very least, the idea of 9 to 5 seems disgusting now. Its all about 9-2 /4-7 (or really 9-14/16-19))