Ok, this is slowly becoming a failed project.  I was really hoping to document my travels for my own posterity and to keep everyone back home up to date, but I am failing miserably.  What one would think to be an easy task, has become near impossible for me.  And even when I do write something, it’s either about not writing something (like now) or it’s a recollection of events from a few weeks prior that is devoid of all emotion and feeling as it is too far back to remember them.  It’s dying a slow death and I can’t decide whether I should try to continuously resuscitate it or just Kevorkian the damn thing.

I wish that I had done a better job of keeping track of everything, but I have no regrets.  See I don’t view myself as a tourist, even though I may be one.  I’ve been in so few churches, no official buildings and couldn’t tell you what the most important thing to see in Sevilla is.  Those things are not important to me.  I mean yes, the history and the stories that those places represent interest me, but I’d rather discuss them with friends over a bottle of wine than get a guided tour.

  I’m not sure I’m getting what I want to say out, so here’s an example.  A few days ago while I spent an evening at a dinner party with Carlos and some of his friends, I met a traveler from NY as well.  Well not a traveler, a tourist.  He was in Spain for 2 weeks and then heading back to NY immediately following.  A typical American holiday.  The problem that I have with his time here is not in the brevity of the trip, but how it was spent.  In his two weeks he has been to every major city in Spain, Barcelona, Grenada, Sevilla, Madrid, Toledo etc.  Because of the great distances between these cities, half of the trip already has been spent in airports and train station and not actually doing anything.  The other half of the trip was spent solely in finding the big monuments and churches in each city by following his travelling bible written by Steve ____.  He spent no time in the culture, he complained constantly to me about how the food was horrible here, not spicy enough, and how he couldn’t get a decent American breakfast anywhere.  By the end of his two week trip he gladly stated that two weeks in Spain was more than enough and that he was happy to go home.  And now as he is back home, he will tell all about his glorious time in Spain as he marks one more place off of his list of accomplishments.  That to me, is a tourist. 

Now if was traveling like the above, I would be almost finished with Europe by now, and not stalled in one of the first countries I arrived at.  I would have a Flickr account loaded to the max with photos of all of the grand sites in Europe and a blog bustling with activity of my adventures here.  Actually I wouldn’t mind the last two, but for me they are not the objective of my trip, but a nice compliment to it.  In these pasts weeks/months of being here, I have met some of the most amazing people, been invited into the circles of tight friends and experienced things that no tourist will ever experience. 

I don’t know.  I really have no idea what I am writing right now.  I shouldn’t even put this up online as most of its drivel, but I promised to myself that whatever I wrote I would put there, because I wanted to capture the feelings and emotions of this trip.  So being as there has been next to none of that lately, I feel the need to do so now.  The funny part of this whole thing is how my outlook of all of this has changed.  The real reason I started writing this blog, was to document my travels not just for posterity, but to have a real account of what is what like to up and move overseas whether it be for a short period of time or permanently.  I had looked long and hard online of someone else’s account of a similar journey, but found none.  So I was going to fill that niche.  Now as I look back I understand why there isn’t any out there. 

The longer I stay away from home, the longer I journey through foreign places, the more I believe in the necessity of it all.  Your perspective truly changes.  Priorities get all mixed up and you really start peeling back the layers of yourself and see something different.  It’s humbling, yet strangely empowering.  Since the very first day arriving here and things not going as planned, I have learned to accept, no love the unpredictability of it all.  I’m not saying that I led a very structured, organized life prior, but well I suppose I did. 

So what now?  As I type those words I’m trying to figure out on what level I want to answer it.  What now as in do I keep writing this blog?  What now as in where do I go next?  What now as in what do I do now that my perspectives, priorities and everything else has changed?  Somehow I don’t think an I don’t know cuts it.  But I don’t know.  On all levels, even ones I didn’t list above. 

Well as the rest of the house is waking, another story I didn’t tell, I should probably wrap this up.  Just know that every day I am experiencing a lot more than my blog reveals.  If I were you, I’d ask me about it rather than waiting for it to appear here.  The chance that it makes it on here is growing slimmer by the day.