self-induced sickness?

so here we are! a few days away from going to spain aaaand I feel oddly terrified. well, terrified's quite the strong word, I'd say more in a funk. I think I had just assumed that the week before shipping off to the granada airport I would hardly be able to contain my excitement. I'd be listening to spanish music, I'd have been diligently practicing my verb conjugations, checking out pictures of Seville's Rio de Janiero (and not have to have googled the name for this post), maybe even gone as far as wearing a flamenco dress around the apartment. who the hell knows!
but no. instead I've been feelin' all fevery for the past week and whenever I inhale through my nose I sound like my 94 yr old grandmother. just really pretty stuff.
but after talking to a few wise friends and my dad it seems like what might be going on is something of a self induced illness. the mind is most definitely powerful and maybe it thinks it's doing me some service by making me feel death-bed enough to not go to spain since I feel so scared about going. this probably makes sense as the doctor said she didn't even know what was wrong with me.
so I think the best thing to do is handle this self-induced sickness with a self-medication... and no sillies I'm not talking about crack.. I'm talking about psyching myself up by doing the things I expected would come naturally to me in the first place. researching spain, reviewing the language, thinking about how awesome the experience will be...but maybe not so much the flamenco dress. yet. aaaand for the sickness I have been saturating myself with hot drinks made from lemon, ginger, apples, echinacea, green tea, vitamin c and zinc. woo hoo! hopefully when I become a hippie teacher I'll be drinkin this shit on a normal basis.
So, whilst on the positive note of travel, I shall leave whoever will read this with a few awesome inspirational quotations:

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe” - Anatole France

america things

So after spending approximately one hour and ohhhh I don't know, 35 minutes? on editing this stupid blog, I realize that I have a lot of studying to do.

finals, papers, bla bla bla...
It seriously all seems so unimportant in comparison to the amazing few months I'm going to be spending abroad. Seriously, finals? The sociolinguistics of the Spanish language? The proper accentuation for esdrujulas y graves? The zeitgeist of La casa de Bernarda Alba? Quite honestly, I don't give a poop.

All I can think of is Spain; being nervous and excited and scared shitless and intrigued and every emotion. Preparing...packing...making lists for packing... haha and, of course, making sure I have the perfect color combination of fonts and background colors for my blog. Can't study abroad without that!

But I really shouldn't be doing all that, and I really shouldn't be writing this blog, because I just have three more finals tomorrow and then I'm done! And THEN, then! I can focus on Spain and all that it entails.

oy.

acceptance is sweet.

This feels pretty weird, as I've never made a blog before. It's like this public diary on view for everyone so I'm still thinking a lot about what I'm actually writing. But I'm sure that feeling is going to wear off after a few more entries...

I'm probably not going to be making another blog for another few months, when I'm in.....SPAIN!!!! Right now just dealing with all the stress of VISA and passport and applications and physicals and blah blah blah. All within a few weeks? Possible? Well we shall find out now won't we.

Oh also, before closing, I want to thank my dear friend Colin Withers, III for bringing up the idea of a blog while studying abroad. I know that he will totally match every one of my entries while he's in Australia with all of those kangaroos and didgeridoos (tee.) and Crocodile Dundees and things.

Besos, Tess