3,000 Miles from Home: A Column from Spain

Originally published in Catalyst – February 2, 1989
Written in Seville, Spain – November 1988
By Alex Diaz-Granados, Columnist

SEVILLE, Spain (CCIS Program)
One of the most important aspects of an extended trip overseas, especially for young collegians studying abroad (like us here in Spain), is mail from home—and no ritual is more important than the daily search for mail in the CCIS Center’s mailbox.

The “mailbox” is really one of those plain plastic trays used in offices for papers and correspondence. It sits in the corner on top of a bookshelf.

But to those of us who are 3,000 miles away from home, it’s a link to that part of our lives we’ve left behind in “the States.”

The mailbox is usually empty in the morning, unless somebody receives a statement from the Banco Exterior de España, where most of us have accounts. Or it may have an unclaimed letter from the previous day’s mail call.

Even so, we check it when we come in on our way to class, even though we know it isn’t till after 12:30 p.m. that either the director of student affairs or the student activities coordinator goes downstairs to check if the mail has arrived.

Those of us who are in class at 12:30 start getting restless midway through the class period. We look anxiously at our watches and try to develop X-ray vision to see through the closed door if the mailbox is empty or full.

The minute the period ends, there is a mad rush to be the first one to the mailbox. The student who gets there first sorts hungrily through the letters, looking for mail addressed to him/her or his/her roommates. Some students leave the others’ mail alone, while others take a certain delight in passing it out, army mail-call style.

“Bob?” says the Mailperson of the Day.
“Yeah?”
“You got two letters, Bob.”
“Okay,” says Bob, taking the letters.
“Hey,” Greg calls out. “Anything for me and Kevin?”
“Hold on, I’ll check.”
“What about me? Did I get anything?” another student will cut in anxiously.
“Nope,” says Mailperson after a brief look through the stack.
Greg is about to give up and leave when Mailperson says:
“Greg, you got two, and Kevin three.”

That’s the kind of pronouncement that can make or break our day.

“Did Melanie get any mail today?”

Running gag at the International College of Seville, Fall 1988

Once, when I reached the mailbox first, I got a first-hand look at the winners and losers of the “mailbox sweepstakes.”

I wasn’t handing out mail, just looking through the stack to see if I’d received anything. I hadn’t, but a girl named Melanie received over 20 letters and postcards.

The student who was next in line was counting each letter for Melanie in a tone of voice that conveyed both awe and envy.

“God,” he said. “Melanie sure has a lot of friends.”

For the next few weeks, the running gag was, “Did Melanie get any mail today?”

As sarcastic as that line was, it seemed as if not a day went by in which Melanie didn’t get at least a letter from home.

In our nearly three months here, we’ve all received mail, but not as much as we’d have liked. Most of the mail we get is from relatives and very close friends or “significant others.” (For some of us, this means that gift lists based on who sent mail are very short.)

“Heard from your friends yet?”
“No. Not since we got here.”

About letters from friends (or lack thereof), Seville, 1988

A case in point: My friend Bob and I were walking around Seville in search of interesting things to photograph when the topic turned, as it often did, to the mail situation.

“Did you get anything today?” I asked.
“No,” said Bob. “My mom sent me some stuff and I got that yesterday, but that’s it.”
“Heard from your friends yet?”
“No. Not since we got here.”
“Finished your shopping yet?”
Bob looked at me gravely and said, “I have to buy a coal mine.”
I asked what he wanted with a coal mine, especially since this is something a bit too large for a suitcase.
“Well,” replied Bob, “with all the lumps of coal I’m giving out when we get home, I’m going to need a coal mine.”

Luckily, I’ve received letters from some of my friends, but there have been days in which I’ve looked into the going rate for an Asturian coal mine.

Of course, mail can be a double-edged sword. It can brighten up a particularly dreadful day, but there are times when it strikes the chord of homesickness within us.

The letters (full of references about life in the U.S.) make us wish the term would end and that we could blink our eyes and find ourselves back home.

My friend Ingrid summed it all up when she told me about a letter she’d just received. It described in great detail what her friend back home was doing and ended with the laconic line:

“But this is all very dull stuff compared with what you must be doing.”

Ingrid, who has been homesick since Day One, said, “Not really.”

🕰️ Then and Now

It’s surreal to look back and realize just how far we’ve come. The International College of Seville, once tucked into modest quarters and buzzing with the sound of typewriters and whispered hopes, now offers a far more polished experience for today’s study abroad students. A campus I missed attending by only a few semesters has since evolved—WiFi hums where chilly tile once held our footsteps, and digital bulletin boards long ago replaced handwritten notes tacked to cork.

In 1988, we measured time by mail delivery and shared news by passing letters around the lunch table. Smartphones, podcasts, and blogs were science fiction to us—tools of a future we couldn’t yet imagine. If someone had told me I’d one day publish my old column from Spain on a blog viewed around the world, I’d have smiled politely and filed that away with tales of jetpacks and teleportation.

But here we are. What once took weeks to arrive now takes seconds to post. Connection is no longer a tray of envelopes on a bookshelf—it’s global, instant, and constant.

Still, there was magic in the waiting. A kind of patience, a reverence for words that had traveled continents to find us. Maybe what we’ve gained in speed, we’ve traded in wonder. Or maybe, if we’re lucky, we carry both.