Princeton Week Zero: Smoke and Mirrors

Hello everyone!

Holding off on the blog for three weeks has been a challenge because, as time marches on, I have so much I want to share. As I’ve written before, it takes 90 days to make a habit, and writing down every single funny or interesting moment of my life has simply become one of mine. The moment I hit the ground in Boston, I was itching to take out my ordenador (computer) and document the wild travel adventures I’d just had, along with the reverse culture shocks that, weeks later, I’m still dealing with. But I resisted the urge for all of a week and a half before finally opening a blank Word document. It’s funny because in Spain, the blog sometimes felt like a hassle—not the writing itself, which I love, but the endless photo organization, editing (shout-out to my ever-faithful editor, ChatGPT, for fixing all my commas, which remain a mystery to me), and the headache of actually arranging everything on the website.

It feels harder to justify publishing a blog when I’m back home (or even at Princeton). Maybe it’s because I am home, and over half my readers are, too; the glamour and mystique of being “abroad” evaporates a little when you’re typing from your childhood bedroom or kitchen. So, I held off as much as I could, and now I’m writing to you live from the comfort of my new, amazing dorm room—a dorm that borders on an apartment—and I’ve got plenty of updates.

Let’s start with this room. It has everything—and I mean everything—except a bathroom, stove, oven, or toaster. (Okay, so maybe not everything.) Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been obsessed with those Pinterest-perfect dorms you find with a quick “dorm tour” search, and while last year’s roommate drama put those dreams on hold, this year I have the space of my dreams. Highlights include: an espresso machine (I became mildly addicted in Spain, then came home to discover my brother and aunt each had one, so of course I joined the club), a drip coffee pot, a tea kettle, microwave, fridge, giant whiteboard (no more scrawling equations in the depths of Blair Basement), an assortment of throw pillows, a mini library, a rolling cart, a cushioned chair with a throw blanket, a fluffy pink rug, and—of course—an overwhelming amount of Spain. You all know about my postcard wall and four flags, but what you don’t know is that the day I got back from Spain, Shutterfly had a 101-photos-for-free sale (just pay $6 shipping). So yes, I now have an entire photo wall too. It may be excessive, but it hasn’t crossed into “shrine” territory yet, so it’s here to stay. The room is enormous—nearly the size of my bedroom at home and last year’s double combined. I finally have so much floor space that everything has a place, and the fluffy carpet practically invites me to lie down and procrastinate life. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something deeply comforting about sitting on the floor.

While my room is practically a Spanish museum, the world beyond my door… is not. And so, without further ado, let’s time-travel back to my last night in Spain.

On my final evening there, after finishing my blog and having one last tinto de verano with Court, I walked home for my final dinner. I wasn’t sure how things would wrap up with my host family, since we’d barely spoken all month, but my host mom did knock on my door to say hasta luego (she doesn’t like saying goodbye). I handed her a gift—a stuffed Princeton tiger—and she looked at me, surprised, and asked, “You go to Princeton?!” I was like, “Yeah… you know it?” And she said, “Yes, it is very famous.” The interaction was both hilarious and bizarre, because if we’d talked more during the month I lived in her house, she could have known all about me, Princeton, and everything in between.

There’s a lesson buried somewhere in that exchange: you never really know the backgrounds of the people you barely know. They might be a famous pop star in another country—like one girl at my high school (true story). Spain had been full of these small, odd, smoke and mirrors moments: conversations that revealed layers of people I thought I understood, places that weren’t what they first appeared, and a summer that was, itself, both magical and exhausting (in a positive way.) That illusion has carried over here, to Princeton’s campus, where I’m navigating a new year with shiny dorm décor, while behind the scenes, life is still a Little chaotic and in flux.

Traveling home was a nightmare—the most stressed I’ve ever been, even more than during the infamous bus incident. The day started innocently enough: after an 18-euro breakfast (worth every cent), I paced the airport hallway because my first flight of the day was delayed, and I only had a 1-hour-and-25-minute layover to make my connection. When boarding finally started, they somehow skipped my group entirely, so I ended up being the last person on the plane. We were delayed about an hour but somehow landed early in Portugal. From there, I sprinted to my connecting flight to Boston.

Let me just say this: if you ever have a layover in Lisbon, don’t. The terminal is so narrow that it felt like a Black Friday stampede. I was ready to plow through people with my carry-on just to make it to the gate. (Sorry, not sorry.) By some miracle, I arrived—sweaty (good thing I had my fan), panicked, but in time for last boarding call—only to find that our gate led us to… a bus. Yes, a bus that drove us out onto the tarmac, where we boarded the plane like we were sneaking onto a cargo flight. It was strange, but the bigger miracle was that my checked bags made it too. I spent takeoff glued to the Samsung tracker app, refreshing obsessively, texting my mom that there was no way they’d load them in time. Call it luck or maybe the bright orange “priority” tag, but the bags somehow joined me on that flight. Still, when I stood at the baggage carousel for what felt like an hour, I was convinced they hadn’t made it.

The flight itself wasn’t without drama. At one point, I was very close to starting an argument with a flight attendant. First, some context: while we were flying to Boston, the flight crew clearly wasn’t fluent in English (totally fine) and spoke Portuguese instead (also fine, we were leaving Portugal). About four hours into the flight, a flight attendant approached me and, in a curt tone, asked, “Is that a power bank?” I said yes. She snapped, “You need to put that away; we’ve made multiple announcements about that already.” (Probably not in English.) Having flown on multiple airlines over the past three months—none of which banned power banks outright—I politely asked if this was an airline-specific policy. She huffed that it was an “EU rule” because we were leaving Portugal, and she wasn’t sure about FAA rules. I said, “Oh, that’s weird, because I was allowed to use it on multiple flights in Spain,” which made her completely lose it. I assured her I’d put it away (several times), but she acted like I’d tried to sneak a bomb on board.

Three takeaways:

There is no EU law banning power banks on flights. You just need to monitor them.
If I can’t use a power bank, the airline should provide adequate charging for an 8-hour flight.
TAP Portugal = Take Another Plane

By the time we landed, I was equal parts exhausted and thrilled to see my family. Both my parents and my brother came to pick me up—an impressive feat, considering my elderly dog, Valentine, can’t walk well and has epilepsy so severe that he needs a special nose spray to stop his seizures. My brother even made me a welcome sign, taped over an old race sign so you could still see the Sharpie arrow faintly bleeding through the paper.

After a Dunkin’ stop (mandatory), my first task as a freshly returned American was helping my parents locate our car in the airport parking garage. Sounds easy, right? Except Boston’s airport parking garages are a labyrinth of secret elevators, some of which don’t even go to the right level. Eventually, we found the car and headed home, where I was greeted by my own mess—leftover chaos from a rushed packing job in May—and the shocking discovery that my AC unit had been stolen by my parents, who apparently needed two for their bedroom this summer. I survived three weeks at home without air conditioning, partially to “acclimatize” for Princeton’s perpetually sweltering dorms, but also because after Andalusian summers with 40°C highs every day, Connecticut’s 80°F felt practically chilly. In fact, I remember stepping out of the airport and shivering. I started wearing sweatshirts because it was just so cold.

I’d returned to the U.S. at an awkward time. My pépé (grandfather in french) had passed away a few days before, so funeral prep was in full swing. At the same time, a string of family gatherings that had been planned months earlier was still happening so I wouldn’t miss too many events while abroad. My second day back was my brother’s birthday party (his actual birthday is in May), which was surreal because post-party we immediately switched gears back to funeral planning. Most of that first week was a blur of preparation and services. I was even a reader at the church service, which felt strange after visiting so many churches across Spain only to step into, I think, my first Catholic church in the U.S.—and I’m not even Catholic.

There were some fun activities slipped into that first week back, mostly because it was my brother’s last week home before heading off to start his freshman year at Lehigh. One afternoon we went to this new coffee shop, and the lady at the window nearly scared me out of my skin. I was standing outside, looking at the menu, when suddenly the window slammed open and she chirped, “Hello! I can help you when you’re ready. We just keep the window closed because of the heat.” For a solid three seconds, I stood there completely stunned—not because she startled me, but because she was speaking English. My brain just… froze. I think this was only my third day back, so English still felt awkward and foreign.

Those first few weeks, I definitely had some embarrassing “forgetting-my-own-language” slip-ups. For example, I couldn’t remember the words for “sweet potato” or “pork chop,” so I told my mom: “Can we buy the potatoes that are orange and the pork that’s shaped like this?” and then proceeded to draw a picture in the air. I also invented several words on the spot, followed by either, “Is that a word?” or, “Mom, what’s the word when ________?” Thankfully, three weeks later, I’ve mostly regained my English skills.

Back to the coffee shop: while we were sitting outside, a mom pulled up with a little kid and met one of her friends there. She walked up to order, and her friend greeted her, to which she loudly announced, “I’m glad I made it here because if I heard that kid say ‘I want a cookie’ one more time, I was going to throw him out the window.” So yeah—hearing English in public is weird.

As for the coffee, Tyler and I rated the place “meh.” My brother declared, “Just go to Dunkin’.” It was $15 for two coffees, and they even charged extra for cream, despite having the same cream outside the window for free. If I’d known they were going to charge us for pouring it in themselves, I would’ve done it.

It was nice catching up with my brother, though, and hearing about his “internship”… which was really just a job at my dad’s office. He even started an eBay account to sell off spare parts, earning a ridiculous commission—something like 20 or 30 percent. If he sells everything, he could end up with $20,000. (So if you need obscure machine parts, go check his eBay. No idea what it is called.)

Part of his job is dealing with all the bizarre messages people send about the products. To make things even funnier, he knows almost nothing about what he’s selling, so he apparently asked ChatGPT to help him price everything.

My second weekend back was my dad’s birthday party, which was much more relaxing. We spent the night outside around his new firepit (his birthday gift), eating steak (Big Y doubled our order and charged us less!) and having good conversations. Highlights included my mom’s cousin’s relative, who drove him to the party and, after hearing I’d been in Spain, tried to speak Spanish with me. All he knew was a memorized monologue about how he took Spanish in high school but wasn’t good at listening anymore. I responded in English. One of my grandmothers even joined in, asking, “Delia, is there something in Spanish like como esta?” (Accent intentionally omitted.)

The best part was when someone brought up cursing in Spanish. Apparently, that’s what people remember from high school Spanish—the palabrotas, the tacos, or as we say in English, “the bad words.” The funnier part was that none of them knew what the words actually meant. So there I was, standing in front of both grandmothers and my entire extended family, awkwardly and vaguely explaining the meanings of Spanish curse words.

I’ve also had some shopping culture shocks. Why do stores here need to know everything about me just to sell me a throw pillow? Email, phone number, name, address—just let me buy my stuff and leave. My brother says it was rude when I straight-up asked a cashier if giving my phone number was required. She said no, and we moved on. (Mission accomplished.) I don’t want your emails or texts. I just want some cool throw pillows. Is that too much to ask? Let’s be honest—no one uses those “savings” codes they spam us with anyway.

Why was I buying throw pillows? Well, technically, I wasn’t supposed to be. I told my brother we should get some décor for his dorm room, so we drove 40 minutes to the store… only for him to say, “I’m not buying anything that doesn’t have a purpose.” Sorry, but a poster of a dog holding a pickleball paddle does have a purpose: joy.

Some other highlights of my three weeks off include:

A fun day with my brother and aunt: This is apparently a new family tradition for celebrating college send-offs. My “fun day” last year was just me and my aunt, but somehow I got roped into my brother’s. No idea how. I was literally on the Caminito del Rey in Spain when I got the call that I was “going.” So off we went: mini golf, a boat tour where we basically stared at million-dollar mansions (my aunt’s idea, a little stalker-ish but fun), lunch, and go-kart driving—basically a day of all my brother’s favorite activities, minus the “mansions of the rich and famous” boat stalking.
Helping my mom move into her new office: She’s now based at the new New London Community Center, and moving her in was… an adventure. The highlight was carrying her extremely heavy desk hutch out of the office on my head. Why? Because she didn’t like it and it was bolted down. She left to find tools, and my brother goes, “It’s just glued down,” slams it with his hand, and suddenly we’re carrying it through the doorway—and I’m wearing it like a hat. No worker’s comp for my sore back, but I was paid in lunch at Neon Chicken (think Boston Market but better, and in New London).
Doing heavy labor for my grandma: Three days of house washing, window cleaning, basement organizing, and garage clearing. I was hoping for some music, but the Alexa I’d given her for Christmas years ago had apparently been thrown out.

- Failing spectacularly at making a tortilla: I was cooking for my grandma and decided to attempt a Spanish tortilla… and failed so hard it ended up sprawled across the entire stovetop when I flipped it. She made me scrape it up, shove it back in the pan, and finish cooking it. To be fair, my potato-to-egg ratio was terrible (2 lbs of potatoes to 8 eggs is not it), I burned the potatoes, and trying to flip it with a second bigger pan was a disaster. I’ll probably try again over fall or winter break, but right now I’m discouraged and unmotivated. (Tips welcome.)

Getting clam cakes and chowder: A New England classic.
Going to the Brooklyn Fair: Where I realized I absolutely do not fit in with the local crowd. Everyone was there to see some famous country singer, and there I was, jeans-less, Carhartt-jacket-less, and cowboy-hat-less. When I say eastern Connecticut is woodsy, I mean it.
Speaking Spanish with Grok: Yep, Grok—the AI now built into Teslas—speaks Spanish. Fun! Except it does this creepy fake laugh after everything you say, which ruins it.

Oh and…

Hanging out with my dogs: Obviously.

On a heavier note, I recently saw an article that the Mezquita in Córdoba, Spain, caught fire and was “engulfed in flames.” This seemed symbolic of a pattern I noticed after leaving Spain: wildfires in the northwest so severe they made history, with record-breaking hectares burned in a single week. As heroic as the fire departments were, the flames were just one part of the problem—the lingering smoke, the damage, and the reflection it sparks in people afterward almost matter more.

That’s when the smoke and mirrors metaphor clicked for me. I’ll admit, I didn’t think this metaphor all the way through—fires are devastating, not whimsical imagery—but the symbolism stuck: my life post-Spain feels full of lingering smoke and mirrors.

Here’s what’s stuck with me from Spain, the “smoke” that still hangs around:

Espresso, hence the espresso machine in my dorm.
Late meals (lunch and dinner), though thankfully the dining hall now serves lunch until 3 p.m.
The siesta… or at least an afternoon coffee. One or the other (or both if I’m lucky) makes life better.
Coke with lemon, though U.S. soda just doesn’t taste the same. Don’t get me started on Fanta. I tried the U.S. version for the first time at a post-funeral gathering and… nope.
Saying buenos días. My mom would say “good morning,” and I’d answer in Spanish. She’s even considering learning some Spanish herself—fingers crossed.
This blog. I missed writing so much.
Persianas (rolling shutters). I don’t have one, but I really want one.
Spanish itself, though I feel rusty. I’m hoping it comes back once classes start this week.
Walking everywhere. My three weeks at home were rough without a car—I gave up my insurance before Spain—so I missed being able to just walk out the door and go.

Then there are the mirrors, the reflections:

When I was in Spain, I found it easy to critique U.S. culture from a safe distance, like in that Costa Rica example I mentioned before. But back here, I’m struggling. It’s harder to reject the “toxic work culture” I was railing against when I’m back in the thick of it. How do I ignore endless, essay-length LinkedIn posts from people I barely know? How do I enjoy a sit-down coffee when all my local spots are built for takeout? How do I “sell” a summer in Spain on a résumé when it feels so intangible compared to a fancy internship?

It was so easy to say I was doing the right thing for myself when I was sipping Fanta thousands of miles away. Here, surrounded by the Princeton bubble, it feels impossible to tune out the comparison game. One second, I’m saying my summer in Spain was the best thing I’ve ever done; five minutes later, I’m scrolling through LinkedIn, spiraling.

Also, whoever invented LinkedIn might be the most annoying person ever. Every single post starts with, “I’m excited to share…” Has anyone actually gotten a job from LinkedIn, or is it just a place where we all pretend to be excited?

Like, I seriously would like a job. But if I have to look at LinkedIn or open up my “2025 Resume” Word doc one more time, I’m going to lose it.

This semester is shaping up to be an interesting one. For starters, I’m teaching English to Spanish-speaking immigrants once a week. I have zero experience doing this, so I’m nervous I’m going to mess it all up. But I signed up for 12 weeks, so I’m in it. I’m hoping my swim lesson instructor pedagogy transfers—learning styles, objectives, group work, stations, etc. It has to be similar, right? On top of that, I’ll also be fulfilling a personal goal of learning English grammar… but in Spanish. (Nothing like teaching others to really test your own understanding.) Day one is next week, and I’ve already been looking over the lesson plans. Subject pronouns, here we come. Whoop whoop.

I’m also still on the hunt for a research position. I’ve applied to a few and heard nothing yet, so fingers crossed. The main problem? Every listing seems to require prior research experience. Which is confusing because the Princeton Undergraduate Research site literally says to “start here,” then immediately tells you to apply to these positions. Meanwhile, my friend at Hopkins cold-emailed someone at Johns Hopkins Med School (not even at her own university!) and got set up with a research spot—before she even stepped foot on campus.

It just feels… odd. I know it would be ridiculous to apply to a PhD program without research experience, or to embark on a senior thesis here at Princeton without ever stepping foot in a lab/research position. But if I’m going to write a thesis, it’s going to be the thesis. Like, best-Princeton-has-ever-seen level. Prize-winning level. Not joking. I’ve said it before: I’ll work for free. I can do a lot of things. So if you’re a professor—or know one—looking for an ambitious sophomore who is fun and cool (I’ve got plenty of references), let me know.

Now to the present: I’m back at Princeton. Coming back has been… odd. I’m absolutely in love with my dorm room, and I’m starting a whole new degree path (seriously, I need an advisor), but Princeton doesn’t quite feel homey. It’s funny how scents and sounds trigger feelings. Like why do I feel like I have a problem set due when I’m not even taking math or science classes this semester? Why is there stress when there’s nothing to stress about?

The body is weird like that. In high school, the robotics room had this distinct moldy smell, but I loved it because it meant I’d get to work on cool projects with my friends. If only Princeton had positive scents like that. Instead, when I walk into Roma Dining Hall, I lose my appetite before even looking at the food—and I’m not a picky eater. (I somehow survived four years of Pomfret dining hall food without complaint.)

Still, I’m optimistic. I’m giving Princeton a second shot after a rough first year that had me seriously considering transferring.

At the moment, I’m not officially out of the engineering program yet (because apparently I have to wait until classes start to switch), so when people ask me my major, it’s complicated. I can’t call myself a sociology major yet because I haven’t even taken SOC 101, and saying “prospective sociology major” feels… clunky. My dad doesn’t help; he has no idea what sociology is and refuses to learn. His reaction to me announcing my switch was: “Delia, you don’t have enough empathy to be a social worker, and you’re going to be poor.” Despite my many attempts to explain that sociology ≠ social work (and that I want nothing to do with social work), he still rolls his eyes and tells people I’m studying social work.

So for those of you who also don’t know what sociology is, here’s a video I found a few weeks ago and loved. It even connects to some of my motivations for choosing sociology. Maybe by fall break, my dad will know what sociology is… and if I’m lucky, maybe even linguistics.

On the docket for this semester, we have:

-Sociology 101

-Linguistics 201

-The Making of the Spanish Language (SPA 255)

-Research Seminar

-Feminist Writing GSS 401

So yeah, that’s me and my year. My whiteboard has fallen down for the third time in the past 24 hours, so I’m off to attempt yet another repair—this time I’m breaking out the nails.

Here’s to new beginnings, a semester full of clarity, friends, a research position, and maybe even getting LinkedIn banned.

Hasta luego (spelled right this time!),

Princeton Week Zero: Smoke and Mirrors

Princeton Week Zero: Smoke and Mirrors

Leave a Reply Cancel reply