I've never been a big blogger (or my-spacer or facebooker) so I'm new to the whole transcribing-my-life-to-the-public-domain thing.  However, I've been a religious journaler since the age of 12.  For the sake of efficiency and the environment (ha ha) I've decided to temporarily retire my good ol' spiral notebook and Residence Inn pen and make the full transition to the cyber diary.  In the spirit of the New Year, I'm (reluctantly) making the transition into the techno age.

It's pretty much the same thing, right?  Well, except for the fact that instead of sending my thoughts into nowhere land of buried paper, I'm tossing them out to be reviewed by my friends, family, teachers, and classmates and potentially accessed by anyone in the world...

But censorship taints the entire purpose of a journal, and so I'm planning on pretending like no one will actually take the time to read through all of my ramblings.

This means a few things for anyone out there reading this:  (1) If you're checking in for an update, beware of being overwhelmed with  nonsensical anecdotes.  (2) I may be embarrassed if you mention something that I wrote the next time you see me in person.  (3) I think my journal personality may be an alter ego of my social self, so you may not recognize me through my writing.  But what can you do?

My suggestion:  I think I can put captions on pictures, so I'd recommend just browsing those for a little glimpse of the big events (i.e. "Me with my host family", "Climbing Machu Picchu", etc").  Those should happily satisfy your curiosity until I get back and can share stories in the way they were meant to be shared: face to face. 

Until then, feel free to ignore all posts following this one :)