One week! (and a day)

So, I leave for Madrid a week from tomorrow. Let me just start by saying I wasn't sure if I was going to create a blog for my semester in Madrid. It seemed like the clichéd thing to do - everyone I know and their mother keeps a blog for their semester abroad. Who besides my family would even want to read my blog? It seemed the height of egocentrism to start a blog to say "Look how awesome my life is!" But after reading my friend Allison H.'s great blog on her semester in Buenos Aires, I realized there are more reasons to keep an abroad blog than just updating others on your life. She reflected really well on her semester; on the awesome things she did, but also on the difficulties and frustrations, and on what she learned. An abroad blog, I guess any type of blog really, is more for the benefit of the blogger than the reader. I definitely hope to entertain the reader (note the singular - Hi, mom), but what I hope to get out of this blog (and really, out of the semester as a whole), is a greater understanding of myself. I hope to clarify what I like, what I don't like, what surprises me, and what I learn-- not just for others' sake, but for my own. So that's why I decided to start this blog, in a nutshell.