I sit amongst a group of Spanish pilgrims tending their blisters and sore muscles. Over the top of my laptop I see a dirt road winding through several stone barns and homes. Cows lounge, cats nap, and flies — oh so many flies! — buzz about. I try hard not to be intimidated when neighbors walk by with a foot-long machete in hand. Maria passes with a weighty bale of hay on her back, her beaming smile undiminished by her seventy-three years. This is Ligonde. During the month of July my digital lifestyle finds itself squarely stuck in the roundabout days of rural life. I am working at 4800bps on a radio modem from the Fuente del Peregrino (Fount of the Pilgrim), a refuge for pilgrims traveling the Camino de Santiago.

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Today has been an especially good day in Spain. As usual I am writing from a café, with my café con leche in hand. Just a moment ago while clearing a litter of twenty empty glasses in front of me the waitress made a crack about me having drunk quite a bit and having made quite a mess. Not only did I get the joke, but I managed to respond that, “Yeah, I was really thirsty.” Humor is especially difficult in a second language and it was an encouraging sign that I’m understanding. Earlier this evening, for a change of pace, I walked to a Lebanese and then an Italian restaurant near my apartment. (It is wonderfully ironic and indicative of our times that I find myself going to an Italian or Chinese restaurant when I want to feel a little more at home.) Both were closed. Instead I ended up at a previously undiscovered Spanish restaurant and dined on two fantastic Spanish specialties, gazpacho and paella. At work I put the finishing touches on the website for Agape’s national video and photography contest, “El Mundo Atraves de Tus Ojos” (“The World Through your Eyes” at comoloves.com), made significant strides in learning our film-editing software, and tutored a Spanish coworker on how to build a webpage.

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When you tell people that you are studying philosophy, their first question is almost always the same: “What are you going to do with that?” I usually resist the temptation to hold forth on the intrinsic good of education. Instead, I answer that for some time I have had a pipe dream (so to speak), a plan B, and a plan C. (Fallback plans are something you need with a degree in philosophy.) Plan C would be to become a professional web designer, something I have been doing part-time for several years. Plan B would be to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy in the hopes of some day teaching at the university level. The pipe dream has always been a little hard to describe. About three years ago when I was living in Spain I started dreaming of ways in which I could combine my love for understanding and for ideas with my creative impulse. I had ambitious ideas of films and web magazines and a superhero comic, but opportunities such as these aren’t exactly listed in the Classifieds. Nonetheless, for at least the next six months I am going to have the privilege of pursuing this pipe dream.

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