It still hits me sometimes

It is weird, I have been back in Madrid for half a year and I feel very much back in the swing of things here, and yet every now and then I get that feeling that I have been gone for 4 years. This morning I had a high school flashback. One of my students had to cut the class short so I left around 9 AM. Suddenly I felt like if I was walking to school again, going along some quiet madrilenian street with my backpack on my shoulders. The square tiled sidewalk was still wet from the morning dew between the cracks. The smell of a wet city was in my nostrils: water, dust, mud, grass, gasoline. I was chilly, like I used to be often in high school when I would under-dress for the mornings in order to not carry around a coat during the hotter afternoons. I found myself missing my friend Charles, who used to walk to school with me for 5 years.
I was surprised by the sudden flashback. Like I said, I have been back here for quite some time now and I thought I was over my nostalgia. Then I realized why it was that I was feeling the way I was. I had been back to spain for every season of the year except for the late winter period. Christmas, Easter, Summer and some random visits in the fall had provided an opportunity to reconnect with the land during those different times. However, the late winter months had been neglected during my many prodigal visits. It is so strange how certain smells, feels and even certain reflections of the sun at certain times of day can bring the past rushing into the present. For one moment I was not a twenty-something full time worker trekking across the city from job to job. For one moment I was back in the skin of that odd high school student, so proud and yet unformed, trudging his way to class through the white winter sunlight.