Instead, I am going to tie up loose ends from the blog and leave you all with more pictures than you ever wanted of my travel experience with Angie. I had to put the pictures -- all 600something -- into two different albums. I put some commentary under the photos, too, so you can have a bit of context.
Here's album one:
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| Eurotrip 2009 |
And here's album two:
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| Eurotrip 2009, Take Two |
These are just my pictures, obviously -- I thought adding Angie's might be overload.
I'm not sure what else to say, really. I got my laptop back from Amy, and was therefore able to upload all my pictures from my camera and organize them. Coming back to Cornell at times feels strange, at other times it feels totally normal. In a lot of ways, my time in Spain feels totally imagined, like a dream I had and just woke up from. I don't feel like that life and those people and that setting actually exists. Not now, not when I'm here, back in Ithaca. I also can't decide if I relate to this place in the same way or differently. I can feel myself easing back into the old ways and the old way of interacting with this place, and to an extent I like that and to an extent I don't. The sense of self and independence that I gained in my year abroad is valuable, and I want those developments to morph and grow more while I'm here at Cornell for my last year, which hopefully they will. Being a Cornell Undegrad is a completely different way of living and interacting with the world than my life in Spain was. I hope, in moving back to my "old life", I don't lose the skills and insight that I had gained in my new one.
I should say, though, that this place is amazing and incredible in ways that I never appreciated before. The size, the beauty, the nature, the resources, the facilities. Mind blowing. I always knew I was lucky, of course, but since being back, it has hit home in a new way. This place where I get to be and study and learn and grow is incredible. And I plan to take full advantage.
It seems almost inappropriate to write more now in this blog. This blog for the past year has been dedicated to my travels abroad, to my new experiences and understandings of our world and of myself, to exotic and foreign things. It was my outlet, my way of digesting what was happening and sharing it all with you. Although arguably my upcoming experience at Cornell is just as interesting and exciting and unique, I don't have the same urge to blog about it as I did when I was abroad (nor do I think I will have the time for it). So perhaps I will take up this dear blog once again if I embark on a foreign journey into the unknown in the future, but for now, it is time to say farewell.
Thank you all so, so much for reading. It means a lot. I'll let you know if I start this up again any time soon.
Adios!
