I have known for a while that I like to travel. However, the depth to which I love traveling has surprised me. As I take a look inside myself, I discover that it’s an important part of my core-being. Now, don’t get me wrong…I’m pretty good at being still and sitting back and relaxing at home. Yet the feelings I get and what I experience when sitting on another train or bus or walking among a new town or city, energize me in a unique way. The excitement of the unknown and possible new friends that await are like an adrenaline rush I don’t want to come off of. And the present moments…they are so full of new images and sounds that it seems easy to be one hundred percent present in the moment…it captivates me with the sound of different languages that are foreign to me and spoken by strangers. By strangers I mean friends I have yet to make.
Over the past four months of traveling Italy and now Spain, I’ve consistently loved traveling more and more. I would usually revel in these feelings on every train, bus, and new friend’s vehicle that I was traveling in. No matter what stresses may naturally come with traveling, I found myself asking “Would I want to be anywhere else right now? Would I want to be where I was this time last year?” and no matter what was going on, my answer has been “NO”! I have loved being right where I am…traveling and in these foreign countries among new people. In some ways the people and the lifestyle and culture are different from mine and in many ways we’re similar. Just like I find it to be in my US home of Denver, Colorado as well.
One of the things I like about traveling must be how it keeps me on the move. I was in Higuera la Real, a very small rural village in the region of Extremadura, Spain, for a month and even during that time I traveled to three other areas…yet I felt I was not on the move enough. This past weekend I left that part of Spain, spent a few days in Madrid, and am now in Oviedo in the region of Asturias. For the month of August this is my home-base. I’ll do what I can to stay on the move with shorter trips to places throughout this beautiful mountainous region. At the same time, I’ll make a point to stay on the move within the town of Oviedo itself. It has a lot of history, even for my Spanish family and ancestry, and I know I won’t get bored.
