Notes From A Small Island

I’ve never really been too good at keeping a journal. I’ve tried a couple times, and inevitably what happens is that I start out strong, and then I miss a day or two, and then it’s six months later and I’ve just found the thing under the bed, dusty and hopelessly out-of-date. I think that a combination of things contribute to my failures: I’m lazy; I don’t understand the point of writing something nobody is going to read (ordinarily, I force other people to read my writing whether they want to or not); and most of all, my day-to-day activities are not usually the stuff of compelling drama.

But here I’m hoping to buck the trend, and I think I can do it this time. I’ve got a bit more self-discipline now, so I think I can get the laziness under control; I’ve handed out this web address to a few people, so I’ve got some readers; and while I haven’t become inherently more interesting, my locale has.

I’m going to be spending my spring 2008 semester in Cuba. I leave in just a few days, on the 20th, and I’m there for exactly three months – I come back on the 20th of April. There are thirty or forty NYU kids going, I think; we were together in a room once, but it was back in November and I’m having trouble remembering how many of us there were. I can’t speak for any of them, but I’m sure they’re feeling the same things now that I am: excitement, anticipation, a vague sort of uneasiness. I have no idea what to expect from this.

Anyway, this post wasn’t really meant to be much, just an explanation for why the blog exists. (The title is a rip off of Bill Bryson’s travelogue of the same name; this blog, though, will feature fewer Britons, and worse writing.) And I’m going to wrap it up, because my plane leaves in nine hours and I still have a lot of packing to do. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to update – the internet coverage in Cuba is said to be spotty – but I’ll do the best I can. Thanks for reading, and I’ll get some more interesting stuff up here in a couple days.