Obligatory Introductory Post

I don't often sit and stare at blank pages. Normally, I have something to say and the purpose of getting out a notebook to start writing or opening up a document to start typing is to get that message out of me and into a safer medium.

But the project this summer is a good little bit different from anything that I've written before. I'll be in new places with (mostly) new languages and new ways of seeing the world. I'll (hopefully) be busy each day being inundated with culture and buildings and people. I will definitely be extraordinarily familiarized with the European rail system by the end of my time across the pond. And even though I'm sure there will be many opportunities for experiences that will be blog-worthy, I'm equally sure that there will be many that are not and that I'll have to write anyway, regardless of experience or desire.

Because this summer is about documenting the unexpected awesome. If you think I'm talking in hyperbole here, you don't even understand the scale of the undertaking that is about to occur. In less than 3 months, we'll be visiting 9 countries and over 20 cities. There's at least one church per city that I plan scout out, looking at its history, its architecture, its purpose and its use in the lives of the people that surround it. If I only take 3 pictures per church, there will be at least 150 new pictures in the world of buildings that have been photographed time and again. But the important difference is that these pictures will be mine. The experiences they commemorate will be mine. My life will be tied to these places through the stories I'll tell (again and again, forgetting that you've heard them all before) and that wonderful experience that so many people and yet so few people have, the experience of being there. It imparts a particular kind of epic to one's existence. In short, my life will be awesome. QED.

So congrats to you, dear blog reader, for making it through the first of many posts with (hopefully) only the smallest twinges of jealousy or annoyance. With any luck, my time spent in far away places through the generosity of the Frances L. Phillips Travel Scholarship will be able to bring you the joy of good stories told through pictures, words and the obligatory song lyrics that follow me around in my daily life. In the meantime, feel free to take a second and imagine the explosion of emotions that an airport can carry and send happy thoughts and prayers my way. From Charlotte to Toronto to Dusseldorf to Prague, I've got a lot of traveling in front of me. A lot of thinking about where I'm going next.