It's difficult to believe how long ago it was that I left Texas to study for a semester in Spain. It'll be three years ago next month that I returned. Since then, I graduated college, moved to Houston, started medical school, and married the beautiful woman who put up with four months of trans-Atlantic dating for me.
I set out with the best intentions for this blog. It would be part travelogue, part mini-course on Spanish language, literature, and culture. But the burden of keeping up with the blog started to take away from time experiencing Spain and it fell into neglect. I wasn't exactly making a living blogging so its abrupt end probably went unnoticed by all save my immediate family and a handful of others. I thought about it from time to time, about how I needed to at least make a post explaining that I wasn't going to be blogging anymore if for nothing else than a sense of closure. I just never got around to it.
What made me log back on today for the first time in years was watching the series The Long Way Round on Netflix. It chronicles Ewan McGregor and his friend as they travel around the world on their motorcycles. It's a fascinating show that I highly recommend. In one of the scenes, they're getting an impromptu tour of an old Soviet coal mine by some probable mobsters in Ukraine. They hold up a nugget of coal to prove that, yes, it's a real coal mine. Go figure. I thought, "well that would be a neat souvenir." And then considered the problem of collecting physical objects during such a trip with limited space.
I don't get philosophical much anymore (those days spent talking about nothing at all for course credit are behind me, for better or worse), but I considered the idea that the best possible souvenir they could have from this trip is this series that keeps their memories of their journey so sharp in their minds. My parents were the first ones to point out to me that when you take a trip, you're not really paying for the trip itself; you're paying for the memories. Any time I want, I can go back to Spain, or Alaska, or Boston, or any of the wonderful places I've been lucky enough to see over the years.
Which brings me back to this blog. Although I hope that a few of you have gotten some enjoyment out of reading about the things I did in Spain, I've realized that it wasn't ever really for y'all. It was to keep my experiences sharp in my own mind, so that I could revisit them any time I wanted.
Although I had many more great times in Spain during the few months I was there beyond the end of this blog, what I really want to do over the next few days is chronicle a side trip that I took over Holy Week with two buddies of mine. In a lot of ways, it was my own Long Way Round. A few of us taking a ridiculously ambitious trip through a continent that we didn't know with a travel plan that we were told in unequivocal terms was crazy and would likely get us killed. But what a journey it was. We didn't have the luxury of a full time camera crew and production staff to record our journey, but I do have several pages of notes from the trip that I've kept in my backpack for the last three years. It's time that I make them a bit more permanent.
So with that, I hope that those of you reading will get some enjoyment out of these next few posts. I know I will.
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