T R A V E L • J O U R N A L: A N • E X P E R I E N C E

      A journal, is a book or a notebook, in which we write our personal experiences and thoughts. As part of a class assignment, we were supposed to keep a Travel Journal. This journal was not our typical "diary". In this Travel Journal, we had to follow a few guidelines, given to us by our professor from the book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg. We were meant to follow these rules, which were called "The Anti-Rules"; this prompted us to do the following:

1. Keep your hand moving

2. Don't cross out

3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar

4. Lose Control

5. Don't think, don't get logical

6. Go for the jugular (which basically means to "go into difficult emotions")

At first, these rules were really hard to follow, specifically rules #2 and #3; at least for me. I'm a person that strikes out misspelled words almost automatically, because I'm what you call a grammar freak. I like my writings and works to be properly written and punctuated, and since we had to write without thinking and just flowing with whatever thoughts popped into our head, these two rules were hard to follow at first. 

     As the weeks passed, these two rules that gave me so much of a hard time to follow, got progressively easier to overrule. I slowly but surely, learned to just ignore my misspelled words, and if I wrote something as it wasn't supposed to be written, I would just stop writing the word, and just keep on writing. Another strategy that I found useful for myself, was that when I would write a word and I knew that it was spelled wrongly, I would write a dash (–) and keep writing after it. This experience was something interesting, since I had never done something like this before. 

      Another part of the journal, was to do an activity where we had to do draw something called a "Life Compass." The drawing is as follows:

As one can see, it's very similar to a normal compass, but instead of North, South, East and West we have S, M, E and P; each letter means spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, respectively. According to what we were feeling in that moment, we would appoint a number with 3 being the maximum and 1 being the lowest to each letter. When all the letters had a number, we would sum all and obtain a total. This was our "number" and with this, as we progressively did more compasses, we could compare the results and see the areas where we had been lowest and try to reflect upon this and try to see if we could make a change so that the numbers went up, instead of down. 

      

      For me, I noted that the days when I obtained the lowest of numbers were the days where I was sleep deprived from staying up until late in the night to study, thus affecting severely the numbers on some compasses. Over all, the experience of the Travel Journal is something I may keep on doing in the future. It really helped me ease my stress over the things that were bugging me on particular days. This experience is something I will encourage some friends to do also, while following the "Anti-rules" because it's like a form of therapy that really helped me relax and keep on going through out the day, and I'm confident it will do the same for my friends. 

Travel Journal: Front Cover

Travel Journal: Back Cover

L I F E • I S • A N • E T E R N A L • "C A M I N O"

    During the course of our lives, we change paths quite often. Most probably when we were little kids, we didn't realize the paths or "caminos" that we were heading into. As life goes on, our paths keep changing and changing with our experiences and our environment. The book: Life is a Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel writer by Judith Fein recounts precisely this.How travelling to unknown places, made her understand and see that of which as foreign to her. On a more personal thought, we should all aspire to do precisely this. Is by travelling that we open ourselves to the unknown, which can greatly propel us into a more cultural and wise being. 

     While reading some of the chapters, I felt most compelled with Chapter 13, The Other Side of the Pilgrim's Road in Spain, which talked about the "Camino de Santiago de Compostela". Santiago "El Mayor" or James "The Greater" was one of the Apostles of Jesus of Nazaret. Santiago was the one of the Apostles who took it upon himself to go and spread his gospel thought Israel and subsequently "finis terrae", or what was considered the end of the world int hose times. Later on, Santiago went back to Jerusalem where he was beheaded by Herodes. Santiago was one of the first Apostles to die; later after his death as a martyr, his followers gathered his remains and brought them back to Compostela, Spain. While reading this chapter, I was so deeply moved by the accounts of the author. I've heard of el "Camino" and have also heard from a friend and family members that have gone, and how incredibly hard and painstaking walk that have to be endured for days. But while reading, I felt transported to the surroundings and accounts that the author was describing. I felt this urge to go grab a suitcase and leave.

     As many people embark on the long and strenuous "Camino" wether to do it as a pilgrimage, to explore something new, to find ones inner self, or just to see what so many people talk and recount, this is sure to be the trip and experience of a life time. I'm baffled by how many people decide to do the "Camino" each year, and hopefully I will join all those people who have experienced this marvellous journey someday. But the "Camino" is not just done in that particular place, because we are forever enduring a "Camino" throughout the course of our lives. Life is a "Camino" just as hard as the "Camino de Santiago" itself. Life is full of many lessons that shape into who we are, just like the "Camino" does each year to the many people that walk it every day. This being said, we must embrace each and very opportunity that life gives us, and make the best of it, whether it be good or bad. Every experience is a lesson needed for the improvement of our selves, just like the "Camino" was for the author.

  

"Pocas cosas hacen falta, para el Camino de Santiago. Pocas, como realmente pocas son las que necesitamos para ser felices en la vida. Una mochila, con lo que creemos que utilizaremos en nuestro día a día, y un bordón, que nos ayude a caminar en momentos difíciles. Los paralelismos con nuestra vida son inagotables en este Camino de Luz." 

 –Victor Nuño

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"Few things we need for a "Camino de Santiago". Few as what we really need to be happy in life. A rucksack, with what we think we need in daily life, and a walking stick, a help for walking in difficult moments.Parallelisms with our life are endless in this Path of Light."

– Victor Nuño