Dreaming of Lisbon

Recently the college switched its email server and I was having trouble accessing this blog, which is another reason why I've been so bad at posting this year.  This is the worst year I've ever had in regard to posting on the blog, and I'm going to try to begin getting caught up.  I'm not at a point in my life when I'm doing much travel, so I guess I don't have an extraordinary amount of new international stories to share, but also it's been an exhausting semester with an overload class and two new preps.  Still, some very cool things have happened - and I do like to go back through my old pictures and dredge up stories before they are lost to me forever as the memory fades.  I am leading a group of students to Jordan over spring break as part of a travel class, so I'll definitely have a lot to say about that.  Life is good, although not particularly exotic at the moment.  In the past I think I've equated exotic with good, which is not always the case - although I just drove back to Indiana for Thanksgiving and I think I can say with certainty that painfully boring and closed-minded equates with bad.  What inspired me - forced me - to get writing again is that I've been dreaming of Lisbon lately, which is a bit of a mystery to me.  It's not that I didn't like Lisbon, because I really liked it, but I only spent three days there and didn't do anything more amazing than just walk the streets, mainly in a pouring rain.  It may seem more exotic mainly because of the rain and the history and the colors and the authenticity, as it came as a break during my time in the UAE (which, despite the fact that I really enjoyed my time there, often lacks all four).  Here's a nice, although not great, picture of a beautiful little church on the hill overlooking the bay.  I was very much in between two worlds on that trip, and thus maybe it represents that in my mind.

It was a brilliantly overcast and rainy day, and I just wandered the old cobblestone streets aimlessly - and dreamily and happily.