I’d already lost my heart and mind to one Granada, so I wonder how it could happen again, when I had never recuperated any of it. This here Granada was a few centuries younger, a few colors richer, a few degrees more flirtatious. There was no way around making it a home for a few hundred moments.

It had been a moment since I’d last worked with a nonprofit on the ground, and so I signed up as a volunteer with La Esperanza Granada. The night I arrived from Costa Rica, only two of my roommates were home, snug and coupled on the couch. I would see Nora again about a year later in Ankara, and Joel pretty much every year since, from the Philippines to Tokyo to South Africa to Montreal and Portland. We hit it off like two firecrackers in a pot.

I met the other volunteers over the next weeks, little by little, trickle, trickle, and I could never really tell how many there were because some would come at you all at once like ants and others would stick to their niches like roly-polies, and there were different volunteer houses and frequent relocations. I made quite a few friends and half-friends and such things.