Mira en el mundo

Hi everyone! I started a new blog on a different site to continue writing. Since this is a travel blog site it makes sense to postpone any posts on here until I resume my travels!

So If you would like to keep following my blog the new site is http://wordmira.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading!

Mira

It seems that every time I get around to actually sitting down and writing my first thought is always to how fast time is going by. Since the last time I blogged or the last trip. Time is such a relative concept it can feel like eternity or a fraction of a second, all depending on how you are perceiving the situation. It feels like a lifetime and or day ago that I wrote my first entry and was packing to depart Arizona. So much has changed and happened that it could be measured in a great quantity of time but also feels like the blink of an eye. Now the cycle has continued and I am beginning to think about having to pack up my new life here in Granada.

A bit of a recap of thoughts and travels. My trip to Morocco was really quite amazing. I feel that every new place I travel to pleasantly surprises and surpasses my expectations. It was both great and terrible traveling through Morocco by bus. On the one hand I got to see so much more of the country side and rural towns in between cities, but being cramped, pretty much perpetually uncomfortable and suffering waves of carsickness... not the best. After spending something like 60 hours in the bus over 5 days I now feel I can survive being in the car for any amount of time. 8 9 10 hours? no prob. First we went to Fez, then to the Sahara Desert and then back through Meknes. The Medina (market) in Fez was great, like stepping back in time, where the burros are the only transportation down the narrow streets, the people find delight in bargaining and haggling prices (me not so much), the streets full of spices, produce, or jewelry. After leaving Fez we embarked on a pretty much all day bus ride out to the desert. Which was truly incredible. After changing to Jeeps that could better handle the sandy conditions, I remember feeling like we were in some kind of african action movie, listening to the jeep driver's Moroccan music speeding over the desert terrain all as the sun set, playing with the colors of the sand. When we arrived at out camp site I realized how far out in the middle of nowhere we really were. The sand dunes were like nothing I've ever seen before, the sand was so incredible soft and fine, constantly changing shapes and evolving with the wind. And was it windy, we survived a real life sand storm, with thunder and lightning and all, giant white sand spiders (maybe the most traumatizing) and sand EVERYWHERE! Our tents were made up of Moroccan rugs, pretty much that were so porous that I remember sitting on the ground on my sand infested bed, just observing the sand streaming in through the roof, all the while trying to "spider proof" my surroundings. All of which amounted to barely sleeping but obtaining a great appreciation and respect for the desert. There is nothing like sitting on a sand dune literally seeing nothing around you but more sand, and realizing how vast and powerful nature truly is. The desert is an ocean of sand that could kill you in no time. Unlike the camels we rode, humans are not capable of going without water, and with the dust and the heat the desert can overpower you. I learned that camels in the winter can go a month without water and in the hottest part of the summer a whole week! ¡Que increible!
After a couple of nights in the desert a shower never felt so good when we arrived in Meknes. The medina in Meknes was possibly my favorite part. We got there at dusk when the market was alive with activity. Meknes is a university city so it is much more progressive and liberal. There are women wearing western type clothes, participating in all the market activity, which was rare to see in Fez. Except for in the cafes, which really caught my attention, cafes are literally only for men. There could be 20 men sitting outside at any given cafe, with not one women to be seen. Also, Meknes is not a super touristy location so when we walked through the streets people did not automatically assume we were americans, like they do pretty much everywhere else. People greeted us in French, Berber or Spanish, but english not so much. People were just so genuinely nice to us, it is so interesting how much people fear things they don't understand. Not once did I feel threatened or nervous. But given the recent events in Marrakech that makes things a little more confusing and complicated to interpret. But as for my own experience, Morocco was a great colorful, sensory overload of spices, and much more diverse than I anticipated. The more northern part is very green and agricultural, there are forests and mountains and then change into miles and miles of sand dunes.

As for Paris, I am now accepting any and all funds to buy an apartment there, and I promise to learn French. I LOVED Paris, so beautiful and clean and green! You forget that southern Spain is very dry and there are no parks with grass. Paris is full of beautiful parks with people laying in the grass, picnicking and chatting with friends. The parks and gardens were my favorite thing in Paris. Especially because it was perfect weather outside and the city truly felt alive in the sun. I can honestly say I'm pretty much over going to see tourist monuments. Sure the Eiffel Tower was cool to see, but people just flock to these places just to say they were there, take some pictures and run on to the next attraction. I noticed that in other cities too but Paris especially. In all honesty I liked the outside of the Louvre better than the art on the inside. People were stampeding around to the the "master pieces" running to see the Venus de Milo taking 5000 pictures then running on to the Mona Lisa, which you could barely see because of the swarming hoard. I feel like any true artist would be incredibly insulted in the manner of viewing their art.
After leaving the Louvre I started to think, why do people insist on seeing specific monuments when they travel, just because they are famous? So the next day we decided to visit the D'Orsay museum, which was much more tranquilo and beautiful. I loved all the French impressionist work, Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh, all famous of course but for me much more interesting, and a much more manageable crowd. You could spend forever exploring Paris and it was impossible to do everything in a weekend.

We have about two weeks remaining before it is time move on to the next part of my journey. It is a bittersweet sensation, on one hand I feel sad and melancholy about leaving Granada but at the same time I am itching to see more, do more and start the next chapter. Things are never as you anticipated and the world will never cease to amaze you, as long as your eyes are open.

My memories and things I have experienced while being away will stay with me like the grains of sand that clung to the cotton of my scarf, long after leaving the Sahara.

This blog has turned out to be more of a reflection of my travels than a description of the places I have been. But I’m sure after getting back from Morocco next week, Paris the first week in May and then the last leg of my journey before landing in England, of Portugal and Ireland, I will have more to say about the actual cities!
Why do we travel? Why put yourself outside of your comfort zone and leave your bubble of a life behind? This weekend we went to a beautiful beach town called Nerja and while sitting there in the sand everything felt so surreal. Am I really sitting on the coast of Spain looking out over the bright blue water not so far away from Africa? All this almost feels like an alternate universe that I have been participating in. One of infinite possibilities, be anyone, talk to anyone, trust, love, seek, search for qualities of your true self. Traveling pushes the limits of your perceived capabilities; questions the labels people have stuck to you, the ideas, morals and world views that you have formed yourself or have been conditioned to believe. Traveling to a different country either for a day or a year presents the opportunity to find your own rhythm, to compose your own melody and lyrics to your life. Sometimes your environment forces you to make decisions out of the normal context of your past life. You have the possibility to really extend your abilities and realize what you are capable of. Sometimes I get so caught up in my life here that everything in my life before I got here seems so far away. I feel like I have been in Spain for either a week or a year. Either is plausible, because time is going so fast, but I also feel very at home here. Time is such an interesting concept. It is so relative to your mental state and perceptions. Everything going on around us is perceived differently. Like an illusion of a mirror images all being reflected by each individual’s personal perception. Any certain event, expression, sentence, eye contact or tone of voice or even text message can be interpreted in an immeasurable amount of ways. Especially with a language barrier. Something can come out so completely different than what you intended to say or you can hear something and take it for a meaning that is far from the original intent. That is another interesting thing about different languages and words in general. I feel like my mind works on a frequency not authentically compatible with words. My thoughts and emotions never sound quite right when I attempt to put them into sentences especially in Spanish. So much is lost in translation, the intensity, complexity and magic of ideas and feelings are limited to the way in which we can describe them with words.
I guess on the most fundamental level, the people that want to travel outside of their own little world are the ones that also want to travel outside themselves, to push the limits, to see what we are capable of doing and digging a little deeper to see what it is we have to offer to the world. I feel like a kindergardener all over again, when our teachers told us that we can be whoever we want when we grow up. Somewhere along the line we seem to lose that optimism about our capabilities, we have been brainwashed to believe that the most superficial things are the most important. That we have to conform to the system and be miserable in an office cubical and somehow someday climb the corporate latter to be happy. In search of an all illusive peace of mind, with the next raise, bigger house, nicer car, newest iPhone, and THEN finally I will be happy. What happened to our childhood dreams of changing the world? Why have we settled for conformity and misery? Even if we can’t rewrite the entire corrupt system in which our world operates, what choice do we have but to be part of the solution and fight, instead of perpetuating the problems? I feel for the first time more focused on what I want to put in motion when I get back, more of a spark, something driving me to think or rethink.

I guess this is part of the reason why we travel. Not just to snap some photos and compose a list of cities and monuments we have seen. But it is about losing and finding yourself all at the same time, about learning and teaching, growing, reflecting and loving. I find the only worry I have lately is dreading the time ticking down to when I have to leave. This experience has illuminated the hardships of truly living in the moment and being present in the now. I find my mind wandering into the future projecting feelings and sadness I have yet to really feel. It is almost impossible for me to shut my thoughts up, to be grateful for the time I still have left and my travels to come. I am determined not lose any time now dreading the future goodbyes, but living for the now, basking in the glow of hellos.

People seem to come in and out of your life for a reason, this experience in Spain, has made that all the more obvious. They show you things about the world, other people, or yourself from a different perspective, one that you can’t quite see alone. What I have found most interesting since being here is the way in which we meet people. I have never felt such intense pulls towards certain people before coming here. Maybe there is something about being outside of your normal environment that makes you more in touch with your intuition. But a few people I have met here, I just knew the first time meeting them that they would be a important part of my life. As you grow you start to be more preceptive to compatibility, like something in your subconscious suddenly switches on and you feel a subtle familiar feeling with them, almost like you already knew them.
You meet people that fulfill different roles to complete your life. There is definitely something to be said about having a good friend. Not just one to go out with and chat about superficial things, but one that you can really relate to, one that wants to learn about your life just as much as you do theirs. There is no need to have a million friends just as long as you have a few true ones. There is nothing worse than feeling alone in a room full people.
It is also curious how we apply possessive terms to our relationships. But you can never truly define a relationship, friendship, or love. No one ever belongs to us, we are all free to come and go, in and out of each other’s lives, but it is those who have a constant presence or special impact in our life that we connect with the most and want to spend time with. Even the ones that seem to only have a brief role in your life can leave the strongest impression. But there is no way to comprehend why you meet certain people, and what message they have for you, or when they will leave or if you will meet them again someday, or how they change the path of your life. But I really feel like there is a reason for everyone in your life and at their specific time and place, and also equally your role in theirs.
As you go you create a mosaic of relationships. Each tile a different shape that rounds out your life. Each splash of color represents the qualities they bring into your experience. They are painted for the purpose of helping open your heart, your mind, your awareness. Even the ones that don’t quite fit in, with edges a little to rough to be completely compatible, have something to teach, and leave a equally important lesson. Some fit into the design to love, inspire, present new ideas, passions, directions and opportunities. We are constantly adding to our creation, all the while, learning, maturing, changing, transforming, dreaming and thinking. I am adding to my own design here, etching details and mixing colors.

Wanted to check in and do an update! We are about at the halfway mark for the term and we have all our midterms next week which is a little frightening. To say the least, I have adjusted quite well to the sweet life here and forgot how to really study so it's cram time! I'm not sure how I'm going to adjust back to reality after being here. I love how Granada comes alive in the sun, it is finally starting to get really nice out, and with the warm weather Granada is in full bloom. People strolling through the streets with no set destination and definitely not in a hurry, or sitting at cafe tables adorning the sidewalks sipping café con leche and chatting casually. On a clear day you can really feel the presence of the snowy Sierra Nevadas framing the city's skyline. On a typical sunny day I usually head up after my morning class to the Albycín or my favorite Carmen to sketch or write, then on my stroll back down maybe get a croissant or cafe with a friend. Then its back to the house around 3 for lunch with everyone then maybe a siesta (or homework haha) before my evening classes, after which maybe a few Tapas. I LOVE being able to walk pretty much the whole city, that was one of the main reasons why I picked Granada to study was to have the opportunity to enjoy the city by foot. I will surly have a break down when I have no choice but to get on the 101 or 51 to go anywhere in Phoenix. I love the culture here of small business owners who all know each other, or the little bread kiosks that open precisely before everyone goes home for lunch. We have lost so much of what makes us a community, in Phoenix especially, we have lost small businesses to large corporate conglomerates. Instead of having separate specialized stores for fruit, vegetables, bread, and sweets, we have Walmart and Costco and Target to fulfill our "one stop shop" addiction. We have traded our culture and sense of community for a concrete jungle of corporations. The sad thing is that countries like Spain are also converting to our madness and cities as starkly contrasted to the States like Granada are adopting our fast food nation mentality. I think what I have loved the most since being here is experiencing the different outside opinions of the US and the state of the world in general. I am having a great time have conversations with people here that know more about the States than most US citizens, people who care about the environment, politics, economics and human rights and can see the common thread that links the complexity of them all. I am in love with traveling and don't want to stop anytime soon, there is something unexplainable about learning things by just being in the presence of a new life style, language and people. Being here has really encouraged me that we truly have the potential to do anything with our lives. There is no reason we have to conform to the rat race of the American economy. There are plenty of people that have found jobs that they really care about and feel good at the end of the day, jobs that make you a part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I really feel motivated to keep learning and find a job, internship, "career" where I can travel, help people, and facilitate change. There is no reason why we can't be happy and work at the same time, often times we just settle for less than we deserve. I keep adding to my list of places I NEED to go to, from here in the nearest future are Morocco, France, Portugal, Ireland, England then I would love to make my next adventure in Central and South America, keep speaking Spanish and moving forward to the next phase of my life