The Kane in Spain: What I'm Really Thinking

Now, as you know, I have a blog. What you might not know is that I also have a diary. The chief difference between the two is that very little of the diary is fit for human consumption (the chief chief difference is that the diary takes place inside an actual notebook whereas this is all internet sorcery but anyway). I wanted to have a blog while I was here so as to have a kind of souvenir at the end of the year that I could look back on. Even now reading back over what I wrote in September and October feels strange, Seville was a different place to me then, and I was probably quite different myself! But, you know, blogs are a very public thing to do, and like other public forums such as Facebook, they're often pretty well controlled and censored versions of events.We're living in an age where we can curate parts of our lives to suit what we want people to think about us, so personal diaries are probably some of the few honest accounts we still make of ourselves.

What boring stories are held within these pages.

I never wanted this to be a "And today I did this and then I did this and then I had toast" kind of blog, instead I wanted the 'Guide to Seville from the perspective of someone who doesn't get it at all' thing which I think I've done pretty well in maintaining so far. My diary is where the banal and the emotional go. The blog tells me what I was doing when, and the diary tells me how I felt/what I ate/whether it was cloudy, etc. Not terribly interesting to anyone but myself, which is just as well because no one but myself is ever going to be reading it.

I think keeping a journal is a great thing to do while travelling or experiencing something out of the norm, because specifics fade fairly quickly and if you don't write down how you felt at the time, then your changed perspective later on will colour your memories. I last kept a diary daily in 2011 when I was working for a month in the Basque Country, and while that diary is very full of "Today it rained and we had fish and we went for a walk" it's still nice to read over because I feel like I'm back there when I do. So there's my advice for anyone who is going on an extended trip or a year abroad; keep a diary. Who cares if it's only you reading it. I neglected mine a lot in the first term but since Christmas I've been pretty good at keeping it up to date and flicking through it tonight I realised how much things have changed in the last 8 months. Here are some highlights that I can share with you all.