"Son tus huellas el camino"

"Proverbios y Cantares", Campos de Castilla (1912)
Antonio Machado

XXIX
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en el mar.

[My rough translation...]
Walker, your footprints
are the path, and nothing more;
walker, there is no path,
you make the path by walking.
Upon walking you make the path,
and upon looking back,
you see the path that never
will you return to walk.
Walker, there is no path
but rather the wake in the sea.


In my literature class, we are studying the poetry of the Generation of '98 and Modernism in Spain. The above poem is one of my favorite works that I've encountered in the Spanish language. It's a very simple poem; the vocabulary is not difficult and it's obviously not lengthy. I actually read it in a high school Spanish class as well. But behind the linguistic simplicity is the message. Machado is saying that there is no predetermined path that we take in life. We all create our own path and all that we leave behind are footprints ("Your footprints are the path") or "estelas en el mar" (the wake in the sea, presumably left behind a boat). Evidently, things like footprints and wakes eventually disappear, and this is the depressing aspect of the poem. But I think that the positive message - that we are the makers of our own destiny, that we have "libre albedrío" (free will) - overshadows the negative. Perhaps the price we pay for free will is that eventually we disappear. Oddly enough, this seems to connect with a phrase from Federico García Lorca's poem, "1910", that has been rolling around in my head all week: "He visto que las cosas cuando buscan su curso encuentran su vacío" (I've seen that the things that search out their course encounter their void). I'll have to think more about this connection.
My point was to say that this is a beautiful poem, and that I believe that we are all individuals and we have the power to create and live by our own values, however impermanent they may be.
It also makes me think about the journey I'm on right now - studying abroad. I catch myself everyday thinking, "You're not doing this right." I keep feeling like there's something I'm missing out on, and everyone else seems to be getting. The truth is, there is no right way! How liberating, and yet how scary. I've been telling myself this for at least the last two years, but my insecurity and lack of self-confidence is always my downfall. No more.

I'm here to leave my very own footprints, and I have 24 days left to do it.

Ávila

Yesterday afternoon, I traveled by train about an hour to the city of Ávila, accompanied by my two Korean house mates. We got on the train about 3pm and reached the city with the highest altitude in Spain at about 4pm. We disembarked and headed towards the "Centro de Información para Visitantes", which turned out to be quite a hike. We soon discovered that not only is Ávila the highest city in Spain, it also is the coldest. I haven't fact-checked that, but it seemed fairly evident with the wind tearing through my body. We got to the information center and got a map and some half-hearted advice on what to see from a somewhat bored employee, and then headed out the main attraction of Ávila, which are the city walls - "las murallas". We walked through the gates and saw the Cathedral of Ávila, which was planned as a cathedral-fortress because it is actually one of the turrets of the wall. It is considered to be the first Gothic style cathedral in Spain. Then we went to purchase tickets to go up onto the wall. The stairs are incredibly steep, and it was comical trying to walk up them. Laughing while scaling steep stairs makes the process a bit more difficult. After taking numerous pictures on top of the Great Wall of Spain (self-invented nickname), we went to the Convent of Santa Teresa. It was dark by this time, and it was absolutely silent in the church. It gave me shivers. You know how when all of a sudden you realize that it's completely silent because you only hear the ringing in your ears? It was exactly like that. I realized that I haven't heard perfect silence in a long time (if that makes any sense). It must be from living in an apartment where you always are hearing some sort of sound. That reminds me - I recently found this show about the future called The Tomorrow Show with Mo Rocca on CBS, and I watched one on the future of noise which was really interesting.
Anyway, off track.
We ended up walking around some more after the convent, bought some postcards and took some pictures with the walls lit up at night. We stopped at a café/bar on the way back to the train station. Here's what happened there:
I went up to the bar to order. There was a guy and a girl about my age sitting a few seats down. I asked the bartender for "una caña" (a beer). Immediately after saying this, one of the guys mimicked my pronunciation in a rude manner and he and the girl laughed. I just stared at them because I couldn't believe it. They knew I could hear them, but they did it anyway, and they knew that I was staring straight at them afterwards, but they didn't even make eye contact. At least they had some shame. It's just strange, because I had never experienced anything like that until yesterday.
Then, as we continued walking towards the train station, some people drove by in a car and yelled something extremely rude that I'm not even going to repeat here. So unfortunately, Ávila left me with a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth at the end of our short trip. Spain is not a country that is without xenophobia or racism. It's not that I didn't know it was there before, but I had just never personally come across it.
But I'm over it, moving on, today's another day.

30 days

Well, it seems I haven't kept up with this blog as much as I would have liked to, but I will remedy that situation starting now. I have exactly 30 days left in Spain. I can't even believe how fast the time has passed. Today I registered for my classes for Spring 2010, and I'm already thinking and planning for being home. I'm trying not to do this, but it's hard to keep it out of my mind. I miss home quite a bit, but this does not mean that I'm not having an amazing experience here in Valladolid. Everyday, a million little things remind me of how happy I am living and studying in this city. This is also not to say that I don't have my down moments. My mood is like a roller coaster, and this isn't unique to my study abroad experience. One minute, I'm wishing I was home. The next, I realize how devastating it will be to leave. I will be most sad about leaving my host family and my professors. I talk to Carmen (my host mother), and Li (my Korean house-sister) everyday at lunch and dinner, and these are some of the best moments of the day. We talk about a lot of different things, usually beginning with a lengthy discussion about the day's weather. :-) Usually we end up laughing hysterically.
I am finding that my conversational Spanish is greatly improving, although I naturally have moments when I feel like it's at a standstill. It's all about the idea of "two steps forward, one step back".
I have quite a bit of homework, but I also have quite a bit of free time to balance it out.
Generally, life is very good.