photos

holy shit i just found out all the photos i wanted from granada and toledo were already on my computer. i just couldn't see them before. pictures are so important to remembering experiences, and i feel like i've just recovered one of the best weeks of my life. there's one of me posing with a pair of quebecoise. lemme see if i can make blogger put it up. ok, it's up. you should see it below this post. nice, eh? they're very pretty, as well as intelligent, independent, and open-minded. and we got to hang out for one night in granada. you can just sense that some people are good for you. and you can't stop to think about what great friends you could have been if only you had more than just one night because there are too many people, and if you're moving fast enough to see good ones like this, you're moving too fast to keep them around and i think that's the hardest part about traveling. the hardest part is opening yourself up to one person after another and having to leave them all, and there's no question of whether you'll see them again because you won't, so you don't say anything about how the situation makes you feel because we all know how poor we are in time. if someone brings it up, it just hangs in the air and makes everyone uncomfortable, because we were trying not to think about it so you do the only polite thing and take a picture and you all smile how you want to be remembered, not how you feel at the time because all you feel is rushed and sad but you can tell how we feel anyway. it's in the existence of the picture, not in its content. it's how late we were and how we were running to the bus station already, and how we totally forgot or ignored all that when we saw them sitting here and threw off our packs and took a picture.

there was a nice group of us in barcelona that had to break up because ilonka and june had to go home to holland, and ollie and i walked them to their bus stop and helped them carry their bags, and they really wanted mcdonalds before they left, and ollie bitched about it to no end (for good reason) and he was extra bitter-sounding because he's british. and ilonka told him he was going to miss them, and of course he denied it and she said "if you weren't going to miss us, then why walk us to the bus stop and eat shitty food with us instead of getting decent food and going to the beach?" and ollie couldn't say anything he just got a sheepish look on his face and that's how we all knew he was going to miss them.

sorry if you wanted to say goodbye to me and i didn't give you the chance. please don't take offense. i've just had to say a few too many goodbyes lately.