Drink Life to the Lees

Originally I was going to write a humble, what-I’ve-learned sort of review of 2010’s major events for me. That’s kind of my thing, anyway. But then I started listing what’s happened this year and I decided to throw the humility crap out the window. I’ll just say it: this year was awesome. I’d be doing it a disservice if I tried to play it down. 1. U of I- My second semester of U of I was filled with interesting classes, new friends, and a lot of fun. My classes were varied and I learned so much that I still carry with me. (I can have a basic conversation in French, I can draw and label a cross section of a brain- to a certain extent, I learned about force and momentum and electromagnetism and a bunch of other things I’d never have learned about in an English class.) I got all A’s and made the Dean’s List again. I spent a lot of time applying, writing, and interviewing for the study abroad program that allowed me to be in Barcelona right now. I survived Un...

My motives for going to Copenhagen in December were simple: to see an old friend and to get a hint of actual winter , the snow and the cold I was missing while I was in Barcelona. The sun was setting when I left Barcelona, and by the time I took my first deep breath of winter air in Copenhagen I was entering a world that had already been dark for hours. My friend Jeppe (pronounced something like “Yeb”; I’m sorry to say my pronunciation of Danish didn’t improve much over the weekend) offered to give me a place to sleep and show me around while I was in Copenhagen. I had arrived in the evening, and our first and only stop that night would be a small party at his friend’s flat. I dropped my bag off at Jeppe’s place and we set out towards the party. The streets were cold and quiet but places like the metro and some of the bars we passed revealed that, even though the streets weren’t flooded with people, there was a lively layer of activity beneath the surface. Af...

When I was planning and thinking about Barcelona, I had no doubt that I would return, at least once, to Madrid. Anyone who reads or has read some of the entries in this blog from a few years ago will know that going to Madrid was a big part of my life, even if it was encapsulated in two months’ time. This is the entry from my personal journal the day that I left Madrid: The universe has a funny way of trying to make sense of itself. Or maybe it’s not that; maybe it’s just mocking our attempts to make sense of it. Either way, as I lie here tonight, I have to smile. I’m lying here in this room for the last time, and things are very much as they were the first night I spent here, two months ago. The shelves are empty, I’m lying on a bed with no sheets (I took them off to clean them and they’re still not dry), and I’m staring at the orange square of light cast through the window from the street. It’s as if careful measures have been taken t...

A pasture with cows, unending acres of corn, a small town in the distance. They were familiar to me, a different arrangement of the sights I knew from my home town. As I looked out the window I could almost convince myself that I was driving down Route 102. But I wasn’t. In fact, I was technically farther from home than I’d ever been. I was in Germany, on a train between Memmingen and Augsburg. It was just past seven in the evening when Maggie, Alex and I arrived in Augsburg. Back in Barcelona, we commented, the sun would still be an hour away from setting. Here, though, we stepped out of the train station into the last few minutes of sunlight. It was getting colder, too, which only increased the strange-yet-familiar sensation we’d had ever since we’d arrive in Germany. We looked at maps and tram schedules and compared them to the directions to the hostel. The signs held the unlikely and, in some cases, impossible combinations of letters and sym...