Yes, I'm nervous, but that's okay.

When I tell them I'm going away, people, of course, ask all sorts of questions, but one always comes up no matter how well or little the person knows me: Are you nervous? My stock response is, "I'm more excited than anything," and it seems people write it off as me being naive because, despite these dark circles under my eyes and my pitch black sense of humor, I somehow still manage to come off as a sweet, innocent, optimistic sort of person. Go figure. But let me share a little secret with you, dear readers:

Yes, I'm nervous. I'm nervous as hell.

I think normally people ask this in the context of Colombia's reputation for not being the safest country to travel to, and in that respect, I am not nervous. I have full confidence that the Fulbright people in Colombia as well as the ones here in the States have our safety at the forefront of their minds and will not let anything happen to us. We have to follow some basic rules such as informing them of any travel and, for the most part, avoiding any sort of ground travel in favor of going by air, but I'm really glad to have what I see as a resource for traveling within the country. Who knows, maybe they can also give me tips on how to find cheap airfare while they're at it?

What am I nervous about? For starters, trying to make friends, which can be tough when you don't know a single person. Then there's not having danced salsa since high school and only looking good doing so because of Luisanna Rodriguez telling me what to do all the time, which wouldn't normally matters two bits except for Santiago de Cali is the self-styled "salsa capital of the world." To a lesser degree, trying to find an apartment, though I truthfully can't imagine it being any worse than New York where you have to give a deposit; first, last, and sometimes second or more month's rent; pass a credit check; have a guarantor and then sign away your first born male child to secure an apartment. But above everything else, I'm nervous about adjusting to the little daily things that can really add up.

If Ryan Gosling and Ellen came out with their
own "¡you can learn salsa, gringo!" video series,
I would soooooo buy it.

If you were around when I was still making videos from Spain, you might recall a certain little moment of frustration and hopelessness in a giant park that I couldn't find my way out of and eventually missed two classes that day as a result. It was no good. Then there was the frustration with what I perceived as needlessly complicated procedures for securing a monthly Metro pass or the maze like streets of the city that I never fully understood, or the need to journey to the one Corte Inglés that carried seitan in all of Madrid to have some sort of significant vegetarian protein intake. Those little daily life frustrations can add up, especially when you make one fatal mistake: you try to live the lifestyle you had in one location when you're in another one. It was only in my last months there that I decided to let go of the lifestyle I had become accustomed to in New York in favor for something that was a bit more madrileño, and I regret how late in the process I allowed myself to grow into my new home.

One thing that has recently caused me to be more nervous is the end of my relationship with my boyfriend, who had originally planned to go with me. It became obvious after a while that it would put more stress on us that wouldn't be good for him or me. I won't mince words and say that knowing he would be with me was a great comfort, and now that things have changed, I'm a bit more nervous than I was before. But the fact of the matter is that my desire to go and do this, to see the world, to gain experience in an upper level academic environment, to improve my Spanish, and learn about Colombian culture all conspire together to overpower that fear. It's there, asking to be heard, but in a chorus of so many voices, it can't focus on it for long. None the less, it's hard not to feel like I'll be leaving a bit of myself back here. When I think about him, that he's no

Le Petit Prince et Le Renard

longer part of my life, that we won't be able to share these experiences together, I feel something strange, like an amputee feeling limbs they no longer have. He was my partner in crime, and now, having to pull a solo heist in a foreign land, I feel a bit daunted. He was and always will be one of my favorite people in the world, and I hope we'll stay in contact even after I go, and I'll bring him news of what's happening in the southern hemisphere. It reminds me of the TV series adaptation of the Little Prince and his rose, writing letters back to his home planet to share all the things he saw and did. As the fox said to Le Petit Prince, "Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé." ("You will always be responsible for that which you have tamed.") And in that way, we'll always be connected to each other, as two hearts that, in some way, tamed each other.

Traveler's Manifesto

"Peculiar travel suggestions are
dancing lessons from God."
- Kurt Vonnegut

So this week I've decided to take a break from Fulbright related things and talk about travel in general. Last week I got back from a bit of an adventure I've been wanting to do for years. I left Thursday morning straight from work to Penn Station and rode to Washington DC to visit my friends Mike Davis and Jose Neuman and met his friends Adrian Moncini and Brandon Fitzgerald. From there I went to Chicago on a night train. I was supposed to leave at the end of the day to go to Indianapolis, where I'm from, but my friends Marko Loncar and Paul Helfen convinced me to stay a bit longer and I left by bus next day. (Big shout out to Amtrak who refunded my full ticket on such short notice!) Then I relaxed in Indianapolis staying with my sister, Samantha; her boyfriend, Danny; and their kids, Jada and Eric. I also reconnected with my friend Luisanna Rodriguez (who I met in high school Spanish and have stayed friends with since) and met her friends Daniel Gillespie and Paul Levy, who are now my friends too. In addition to, of course, visiting my mom, her husband, and some other family.

As you might be able to sense by now, I love meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends while traveling. I even met up with Aleks Sierakowski, who I met at last year's American Literary Translators Association conference in Bloomington, Indiana, and met his friend M Echeverria. On the train, I had interesting conversations with my next door neighbor, a cute construction worker from Wisconsin who talked like he was from Michigan; some moms on their way back from acting as chaperons on a middle school DC trip who I sat with in the dining car that night after they learned I could understand what they were saying in Spanish; and I had the bizarrely pleasurable experience over-hearing a lesson from what can only be described as the Hispanic Sarah Connor on how to select and grip throwing knives. You see, these strangely beautiful things never happen when you stay inside your house. The world has such amazing things to experience if you only just show up to them. Everyone has a nugget of truth and wonder, a piece of existence’s beautiful tapestry that they’ll willingly show you if you're open to it. These are the things that recharge me when I’m feeling a bit drained, when my job wears on me, when life has stopped being a series of discoveries and has turned into a monotonous grind.  Speaking of grind, here’s some footage of me from the security cameras at work:

I saw museums that taught me about Africa and the ice age, ate some of the best vegetarian food I've ever had at the Chicago Diner, waxed nostalgically over Spanish tapas for my days in Madrid, got sloshed on margaritas with my family, and read a bedtime story to my niece, none of which does my life permit me to do on a regular basis. It reminded me how important travel is to me, and so without further ado, I give you mon petit manifeste du voyage:

Traveler's Manifesto

This is a statement,

simple and direct:

An object at rest stays at rest,

and an object in motion remains in motion,

until some outside force acts upon it.

We’re born in motion,

entering life like an arrow loosed from the bow,

and over time, things stop us:

air resistance, friction, social mores and others’ expectations.

They tried to stop the nomadic Natives;

they tried to stop the moving sands

with grasses that root in the dunes.

They tried to put us in boxes:

houses, fences, cubicles, personality types and mortgages.

This is not without its merit,

but we should never forget

that no form of growth is without some form of motion, movement.

And that standing water often breeds disease and stagnation.

So, please, go, go, go!

because you’ll never learn anything till you see what you’re missing.

And now, I'll leave you with this, a song about people traveling on the back of a whale to different places and having adventures. (If you have this whale’s number, please send it my way!)