Jumping on the Blogwagon

After ten months of using "I'm going London next spring" as my standard small talk conversation fodder, I find myself squarely facing "next spring." Even before London was the chosen destination, studying abroad was always part of my academic plan. My parents, my cousins, and even many of my friends have faced the collegiate milestone that is studying abroad, and now it's my turn. I doubt it will become less surreal until I'm stumbling around Heathrow at 6:30 in the morning--I'll keep you posted.

This blog, however, is a new addition to the plan. I have dreamt, probably since the first time I read My Side of the Mountain, of being able to disappear into an adventure, to jump onto a bus and sail across the Atlantic, to burrow into a tree in the Adirondacks. The allure of disappearing from one metro-pole and reappearing anonymous and unnoticed in another is very powerful. The charm of setting off on a great adventure with no means of communication but postcards and foreign stamps, maybe a telegram for emergencies,is one I am very tempted to be seduced by. But unfortunately, "such great voyages in this world do not anymore exist." Constant communication is a blessing, but also an expectation.

That expectation is not, of course, unreasonable. We have the power, why not take advantage of it. The world seems to have gotten exponentially scarier since the invention of the telegram (--correlation does not mean causation--), and I am grateful that you want to know that I am alive, and what I am up to. I've had several friends go abroad and read their blogs rabidly. Radio silence was never a good thing.

And, of course, this blog venture is partially selfish. I have a somewhat captive audience, the chance to tell stories twice (via blog and in person. mwahahah) and an instant chronicle of my time in London.

So I'm biting the bullet. I'm buying an international cellphone to call my parents and starting a blog for everyone else. I'll save my stamp money and these will be my letters home.


Love,
The Mouse

P.S. Because the internet is big and uncontrollable, I'm going the pseudonym route. My parents bought me a mouse snowsuit when I was born, little did they know it would be so useful twenty years later. I intend this blog for family and friends--y'all already know who I am.
T.M.