from Pittsburgh to Minnesota to...England, this time.

(typed up from the first entry in my trip diary)

I'm leaving in about two weeks and it feels a bit sacrilegious to start writing in my journal before I'm on my way...but really the mental journey of this trip started a long time ago, which, funnily enough, is exactly what I came to say.

I've been thinking a lot about Spain and how my brain can't get used to "going to Europe" not involving Spain. I've been bemoaning a bit (but not ungratefully) because I love Spain so much and can never get enough. But I had a sitdown with myself to try to refocus on why--the last time I left Spain--I promised myself I was going to England the next time I crossed an ocean (and not just because of the Olympics which were ongoing then).

Because long before I learned Spanish and fell in love with some silly tennis players and jumped at the chance(s) to visit the land that really inspired my serious study of the language--I got my hair cut like Lucy Pevensie (BBC version, aged 4-7?), a younger sister whose unbelieved and unacredited imagination I identified with so strongly (uncharitably casting my brother as Edward, who makes her out to be a liar).

I devoured the story of Anne Boleyn (4th grade project) whose tale was just gruesome enough to fascinate me, and whose character was just real enough to inspire me: laughing in the face of death! strawberry mole on neck! defiant! I followed that with Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth I, but my middle namesake Anne was always my favorite. And then I followed my Tudor obsession many years later into realizing why Catherine of Aragon was called such--neatly wrapping pieces of my Spain interest into an earlier obsession.

I named my gerbil Lyra after the hero of The Golden Compass (6th grade)-brave, adventurous, but still very relatable. And though often I identified more with her worrywart daemon Pantalaimon--I understood Lyra's ability to push herself to be brave for him--which, in essence, was for herself.

I dreamed about going to school at Hogwarts and always cherished the look into the everyday school life as much as the fighting adventures. The Mennyms existed as living things that had no right. A Little Princess showed me about a father's love and plowing through rough times without forgetting yourself.

I yearned for castles and timbers, a language that was understandable but just different enough to be delicious, a land with magic and history seemingly oozing out of its very soil into a potent mix of inspiration, imagination, and a deep sense of wanting to belong to something familiar and comfortable and safe but unpredictable and full of endless potential for adventures at the same time: a wardrobe porthole to another land, a wizard alley hidden behind normal London streets if you just know where to look, ruins of an ancient past to be explored around every bend.

Is this too lofty and unrealistic for the real UK to live up to? Maybe. But hopefully I'll get a glimpse of ruined castles or misty moors with the possibility of magic lingering in the air, just enough to satisfy my childhood dreams. From that, maybe I can create some better sense of myself, who I've been to make me who I am now, and the real world I live in.

The very last bit of my trip diary from Spain and Portugal in 2012.