I don't mean to steal, but...

This is just too good to keep to myself. One of the bloggers that I follow (Totally Severe) posted on her recent trip to Bolivia, and without going into detail, she really captured the experience in just a few phrases:

"Yo soy un río de pie." (from a poem by Reiche)

I didn't really get what this meant, until I'd read the whole post, then reread the title of the post. Then I got it. "I am a river of feet"... doesn't sound as romantic as in Spanish, but it really fulfillingly encapsulates the experience of traveling in a foreign place alone...

"It’s entirely possible that I’ve captured the skin of the city and failed to reveal the heart." (on the photos she took while traveling) ...so freakingly beautiful I wish I had coined this sentence... once again this sentence is like a photo capture of the awkwardness and conspicuousness of being a foreigner doing foreign things in a foreign place... also the stuntedness of a person with limited equipment, limited skills, limited time, limited vision, and limited cultural understanding and assimilation to fully capture the essence, the moment, the feel and time of a place and of being.

I totally get Sarah's struggle of restlessness, anxiety, and exhaustion mixed in with the beauty, thankfulness, joy, exhiliration, and openness of exploring a scary new place. Peace to the traveler.