Not-so-Wordless Wednesday: España

If you've been reading this blog in a reader for the past couple of days, visit the website and you'll see a lovely new blog theme! I took a simpler route in terms of page layout and designed a nice little logo of sorts (props for the awesome logo concept go to my boo, Colin). The header image used is actually one from my own collection (or maybe a friend's), because I didn't want to use a random image from Flickr without the photog's permission. [I wish there was at least one dude in it, though.] So this image is going to be the theme of my not-so-wordless Wednesday.

Here's the original version of the header image:

It's of my friends and I somewhere in Cordoba, Spain, during the Spring Break of our Sophomore year—the semester we studied abroad in London (Spring 2006). In front of us was a river that had a broken baby carriage washed ashore. To our left was a Jesus parade (it was Easter weekend). When I browse through the pictures from this trip, it appears as though we were having the time of our lives. But this is one of those situations where the scenes behind the pictures were oh-so-different.

We're eating breakfast at an outdoor table. CLICK! A gypsy was stealing my roommate's purse (and that was only one of two robberies, my wallet being the other—aghh, Spain you got us!).

Group shot on quaint Spanish street outside restaurant. CLICK! The verbal arguments about restaurant choice and splitting the bill ensue.

Shot of friends walking down the street. CLICK! Really it's more of a "storming off in anger" than a leisurely stroll.

Shockingly, we made it out alive, friendships intact, but it was touch and go there for a while. [And according to the pictures, we seemed to have read a lot. Like on the beach in Valencia. Or on the roof of our hostel. It probably just kept us from having to talk to one another.]

But isn't it funny that browsing photographs can sometimes be like looking at a memory through rose-colored glasses? I reminisce on that whole semester with a smile, and details about it are so completely engrained in my memory that when I returned to London after graduation in 2008, it was so familiar it seemed like I'd never left. But really, I'd probably never been more annoyed in my life. Oh well, c'est la vie. And that's what books are for.