Speaking of farewell, it´s almost time. I just finished my final. Class is over for me. I got my second paper back, which my professor liked very well. I´m forseeing an A in that class. If not, I´ll be a little upset since it´s the only class I´m taking here. Plus, it´s a literature class, which is my thing. It´s like English, but it´s, erm, Spanish.
I had a neat experience yesterday. In class, we all had to memorize a Spanish poem. I recited Antonio Machado´s ¨Proverbios y cantares, XXIX.¨ Fabulous poem. Well, Machado lived in Segovia for a while, so his house is now a museum. However, like everything in this country, it is closed for repairs. (See: the experience my friends and I had when we walked all over Barcelona to find Gaudí´s Palau Güell only to find when we got there a sign that said Closed until 2006.) So we just study outside Machado´s house and looked at it, then I recited my poem. It wasn´t until we were walking back to the Centro (to ¨learn¨ flamenco) that I realized what I had just done. It was like performing A Midsummer Night´s Dream in the Globe Theatre. Okay, okay. It wasn´t that big of a deal, but it was really neat.
I´ll give you a run-down on the poem. Here it is, first in Spanish:
¨Proverbios y cantares, XXIX¨
por Antonio Machado
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino:
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en el mar.
Okay, so now here´s (roughly) what it is in English:
Traveller, your footsteps are the road and nothing more. Traveller, there is no road: the road is made as you walk. As you walk, the road is made, and when you look behind you to see the path you´ve made, there will be nothing there. Traveller, there is no road -- except the wake in the sea.
A little philosophical, eh? I´m not sure I agree with the philosophy of it, but it is something to think about. Is there no path we are supposed to follow? And are there no paths left behind by those that go before us? Hmm, it would be neat to do a comparison with Frost´s ¨The Road Not Taken.
Well, this looks like the lost blogature from España. This afternoon, I´m going with my friend Eloise to Ávila because Santa Teresa de Ávila is her confirmation saint. That should be a neat experience. I hope to have a little bit of fun around Segovia tonight since it´s the last possible party night. Tomorrow, Jennean and I (read: just Jennean) are cooking la comida for our señores and their son. I guess I´ll be doing all my packing, wedging souvenirs in every free nook and cranny. And we roll out of Segovia at 6:45 in the morning from the bus station. It´s gonna be cute, Jennean and I trying to figure out how to call a taxi at 6 am after getting about three minutes sleep. We fly from Madrid to Atlanta and from Atlanta to Cincinnati. I should be busting up in the airport around 8 pm. I am very excited about coming home, seeing everyone, and doling out the gifts. Showing pictures -- there are much more than are on Flickr. Talking incessantly. It´ll be a good time. See you soon enough!
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