Well, that's a bummer.
It costs the same amount to change my ticket from a coach round-trip ticket to a one-way coach ticket as it did to buy the thing in the first place. 
I can't in good conscience ask anyone to pay $700+ just so I can go home three weeks early, so I am staying here.  

This is not what I wanted, but I'll deal with it.  Ibai is being very good to me, and it's really not his fault -- I just need to be with myself, and I can't do that here.  That whole 'personal space' thing that Americans like so much really does not happen in Spain. 

So I am going to have to suck it up and stop being so homesick, and make the best of my last month in Spain.  I am going to have to unpack - in my eagerness to be home I'd already started packing, started doing laundry for the trip, planned what to wear to the airport (I got searched last time for wearing a long dress).  Hopefully this later arrival will not negatively effect my job-hunt stateside, but honestly, I have a feeling that everything will work in my favor.

So, now.  What now?  I was wanting to come home, to work on my Dylan show and paint from photo of the beautiful places in Spain.  I wanted to start writing in earnest for the book I've been planning (which I've found I can only really focus on when left to myself).  I wanted to be alone day and night, and center myself, gather that beautiful solitary strength.  Now I will be surrounded, instead, on all sides -- by beautiful things, but surrounded.

At least now my Spanish will be really good.  I've started talking a little and I understand about 90% of what is said.  There are good sides to everything.  I will find the good in this side. 

Madrid, El Prado, San Sebastian ... these are good things.  I want to visit Andalusia and see a real flamenco bodega.  I will call Antonio Lopez Garcia this week.  I will write the letters I have been planning to write, and recoup, and make this the best thing that it can be.  I will carve space for my painting into this little house, and I will make things. 

I will be back in the USA on August 17th.  I will be starting classes on the 24th.  Somewhere in there, I need to find a second job, get a new phone, reinstate my car insurance -- all that good stuff.  I couldn't do this without my family.  I am grateful.  I am also very sad -- I miss being able to go get something to eat at 3AM.  I miss my friends being a short drive away.  I miss driving.  I miss going out without people staring (there is a staring culture here that does not exist back home -- people will just look at you, openly, for as long as they feel like it.) I miss a lot of things, but mostly I am disappointed that I am not going to get that time to myself that I have been craving.  Oh well.  There it goes.

Back to work.