One Week

As I approach the beginning of the end, as I change all my mailing address (both permanent and temporary), as I start a new life, as I start a new journey, I thought it would be rather appropriate to start a new blog. I'm not sure if this is the one I will use strictly for my traveling (which I hope to do more of in the years to come) or as a regular blogging outlet, but one thing is for sure. It's new.

There's always a sense of refreshment, of rebirth, in something new. A renaissance as the French like to call it, French accent included. I've always liked the blogger format. It's simple, clean, straightforward. I wish my room were more like this.... that is, if I had a room. But maybe with my new beginnings, I can transform my new room into the minimalist style of this blog.

One week from tomorrow I leave for Ecuador. It feels like so much time, but I'm sure it'll pass by quickly as I make the necessary arrangements. Get health insurance, make photocopies of all the important documents, see and talk to friends for one last time before I disappear for a month. There's things I need to buy: toilet paper, gatorade mix, maybe some iodine tablets and that underwear that you can wear forever without washing because bacteria doesn't grow on it. Well, perhaps the last one is unnecessary, and may even lead to the downfall of my dating life, but then again, there wasn't much there to begin with, so that's really no big loss. There's a chance I won't be able to get internet access more than once a week so this blog may be all for naught if that's the case. I figure my mailbox will fill up with so much mail that it will take me at least half an hour just to get through it. So if you happen to send me an email in the next month or so, forgive me if it takes a few weeks to respond.

I still have no place to live in Augusta, but it looks like I'll be living with Sunya, so I'm basically banking on her to take care of everything. Sunya's mom is the lady who taught tennis to first my mom and then me. Peachtree City is, or was, a small community, and the tennis community was also pretty small, so our families have known each other and stayed in touch for a pretty long time. Apparently, our moms were talking a few weeks ago and discovered that we were both going to MCG, so figured we should live together. Not a bad deal since I know Sunya and her mom, and I know she's responsible. It's funny how things just sort of fall in place.

Why Granola? Well, it had to be something food related. You know me. It also fits my personality. Sometimes, I can be kinda nutty, other times, I can be plain boring like rolled oats, and on the rare occasion, I can be sweet, like raisins or (on) dates. I feel like my posts will also be an assortment of topics and styles, ranging from bullet point format to long dissertations on my current frustrations. Moments of sheer joy and contentment tempered by disillusion and questioning of the world around me and myself. And it's just simple to remember. If I had something really witty like Food for Thought or The Gastronomist's Guide to the Galaxy it would have been harder to remember, and maybe only half the people reading this would remember the name of the site. Well, since I'm the only person reading this anyways, and there couldn't be half of me, I guess everyone, i.e. me, could remember it pretty easily. But the biggest reason I chose Granola as the name for this site? It was still available.