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01 August 2011

Back to the Basics

It's been a milestone kind of day. Until this point, my possessions in Spain have been primarily functional and suited for survival needs: toiletries, food, clothing, plastic organizational trays, and books. Today, I have acquired a backpack, an exercise ball, a whiteboard, a sketchbook, and thread, which are not crucial to survival but which make survival much more pleasant and healthy. It's like I'm really moving in to stay!

At the same time, I am not being run out of my room by paper trails and clutter piles. Man, I love this back-to-the-basics kind of life! I didn't want to bring more than two suitcases of stuff to Spain because I wanted to actually wear out clothes, get holes in shoe soles, leave all the auxiliary junk behind. Certainly there are one or two things I regret not packing (but mom, you'll be happy to know that I perused the entire women's section of the shoe store today and couldn't find a single pair in my size [it's possible I suffer cravings from my past life as a Payless junkie]). Since I moved away from dorm life, I've been struggling to pare my possessions down to just what I need and not much more (Hoarders, anyone? Thrift store bargains? Post-it note mountains?); it was ideal that I could literally just hop on a plane and (mostly) start over.


So now, one of my life goals is to be someone whose life could be described this way:


If I could expand it, it'd say: Have less. Give more. Do more. Love more. Be more.

Getting there. Slowly but surely.


Unrelated P.S. Something I've come to appreciate about Spanish: 70% of the time, if I don't know the word for something, I can try using a similar English word pronounced with Spanish vowels, and it works! Not sure how to explain that something is a lie? Try decepciĆ³n. Can't resist something? It's a tentaciĆ³n. I thought for sure I'd sound exceptionally dumb when I went to the pharmacy and asked for a multivitamina, but sure enough, the lady knew exactly what I was talking about. God bless those Latin roots.

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