To Madrid!

Thank you to everyone for your support and kind words following my grandmother’s passing. It’s been hard for me to get ready for this European adventure, and part of me wanted to turn around and stay with my family even as I boarded the plane. Six weeks isn’t really that long to be gone, but the last few months have been a time of discovery and reinvention for me and I’m sad to be parting—though temporarily—with the people who have so valuably contributed to what I might consider to be a transformation. So many friends have encouraged and reinforced me and I’m grateful, but perhaps this trip has come at just the right time for me to go it alone for a while. I’ve certainly had a rocky approach to my takeoff—I managed to turn in late every piece of paperwork for this seminar, squeeze in a required physical only days ago, book my hostel at the last minute, and I hate to admit that I just didn’t go to bed last night because I had too much laundry, cleaning and packing to do… But despite my total inadequacy at preparing for an international trip, I take it as a good omen that the text-book (which I have to read before my group meets on Sunday) that Powell’s supposedly lost, miraculously showed up in the hands of a pony-tailed UPS man just moments before I left for the airport. It truly was serendipitous, and I’m lucky that Greg was willing to stop on Mercer Island to let me say adios to my family. The only bad news is that now I have to do my homework!