MADRID--Flying standby is a lot like finishing a LSAT review class--you wish a lot of good people a lot of bad luck in the short term. Take, for instance, the mob of teenagers in this gate area. Normally I wouldn't wish the Fighting Tubeworm Marching Band anything but a good flight and a massive change in the social hierarchy of American high schools. But today I'm on standby, and they've got all the seats. So I've spent the last half-hour trying to give one of them food poisoning through mental telepathy. In a country where people eat ketchup-flavored candy (really), I figure my chances are better than average.

I want to go home. After a great Spring Break, I have reached the final, horrible stage of the American experience abroad. I'm as desperate to get out as Limp Bizkit at a poetry reading ("I did it all, ahem, for the nookie." Crowd snaps.).

This week started off on a different, happier note--like trips to foreign countries always do for me. In Stage One of my time abroad, every new experience was a bliss of tolerance and wonder. "You'd never get this in the States!" I said gleefully at a Spanish restaurant, munching on a part of the bull that even his mother is embarrassed to mention. "Why are the waiters laughing at me?" Here in Spain, people sing together at bus stops. At first, I didn't think that was weird. Then, long about the third day, I hit Stage Two.

In Stage Two, you recognize that this new country, like any other, has its downside. There's the ketchup candy, for instance. Also, Spaniards have a bothersome habit of throwing fruit at you from their window and yelling "Yankee go home, muddafudda!" (really). But in Stage Two you don't get angry, you get concerned. What about American imperialism has angered these vulgar, fruit-throwing Spaniards? Are they mad we stole Antonio Banderas? Seriously, if you want him back, we can have him packed and shipped in under an hour.

Some of you Americans, like me, may have countered such angry Europeans with the claim that our parents/grandparents/Ronald Reagan saved Europe from Nazis/Communists/boy bands. This tactic is especially useful against the French, whose military motto before 1940 was, "The best defense is 237 official varieties of cheese." But here in Spain the fascists ruled until 1975 and 'N Sync is huge, so they pretty much owe us nothing. No matter--after a few days of genuine concern, I've now entered the dreaded Stage Three.

Tired of hassling with a new language and a new culture, I have become a cross between Jesse Helms and one of the dogs from Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey--and not just in the sense that I'm wrinkly and prone to spontaneous napping. I mean that I'm seriously pro-U.S. and definitely ready to go home. Yesterday, Britney Spears came on the radio and all three of my senior male companions began shrieking like Nebraskan seventh-graders outside the MTV building. That kind of American dementia is a sure sign that Let's Go has become Let's Get the Hell Out of Here.

But my urge for home is bigger than just my current effort to get a tuba player to toss his tapas and miss the flight. I've had my own little cycle of tolerance and rejection with the Northeast since I first came here from Texas four years ago. As a first-year, I loved Boston because it was a new experience. "More sleet!" I would yell. "More scrod! Wicked! Wicked! Wicked!" Sophomore year, I saw a downside--that accent was really not just an elaborate ruse. Now, in my senior year, I'm watching my friends take jobs in New York and Boston, and it seems these places are unavoidable on the path to success. Problem is, after three years I'm sick of the Northeast. I want to go back home, where the best thing at a donut shop isn't the coffee.

But now, though the always-awkward transition from funny-funny to funny-meaningful is complete, I don't have the space or the surety to finish this thought. Maybe I like Texas just because living back in your home region is less of a challenge--I can be sure about the ways of life, certain about the cultural centrality of livestock. I don't know now where I'll be working come November, and so maybe thoughts of home provide an element of security and permanence my current life lacks. Or maybe other seniors and I are drawn back to our homes because making something of ourselves back there would mean more than it would in the impolite anonymity of a strange, big city. Maybe I just really don't dig the Northern accent (in Texas, Fran Drescher is officially classified as a game animal).