Adventure Time

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." -Saint Augustine

 

Well the time has finally come to pack my life into two suitcases and ship off to España. It's hard to believe that today is here. It seems like just yesterday that this trip was just a blip on the horizon, six months away, and now it's time to hop on that plane.  The mix of emotions that has been simmering for the past few months has finally culminated to something I find hard to actually pinpoint. It's as if someone threw nervousness, excitement, stress, jitters and adventure all into a bowl, mixed it up, and has been spoon feeding it to me for the past week. Needless to say, I have PLENTY of energy going in to this trip.

For those of you who don't know, I'm going to be staying in Salamanca, Spain, which is about 215 km northwest of Madrid. I'm going to be taking classes with my fellow Deacons and living with a family. We're about to see how good my Spanish really is....(side note: I've had more than one nightmare that I get over there and the only thing I can remember how to say is "Hola, me llamo Cameron.")...so here's to hoping that my years of Spanish classes don't fail me now. A flexible class schedule coupled with three day weekends should give me the chance to explore, get to know and fall in love with Salamanca and its unique culture. To dig deeper than the average tourist, and learn a little about myself and a little about life.

 The fact that I'm going to be living in another country for the next three and a half months hasn't really sunken in. This isn't vacation or even an extended stay. I'm going to be living in another country halfway around the world starting tomorrow. It's beyond surreal. But I'm ready to go. With my neutral wardrobe (barely packing in to 2 pretty big suitcases), passport in hand, and 95% certainty that everyone on my program will label me the resident diva (because of said suitcases), I am ready to go.

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
What you'll discover will be wonderful.
What you'll discover is yourself."
-Alan Aida
 

As my one of my very dearest friends would say, "it's adventure time". And so I'm off. Off to meet new people. Off to see new places. Off on my next adventure.