In Bilbao the taxi driver’s eyes widened when I told him I had just arrived from Anchorage. It’s possible he hadn’t met anyone from Alaska, but my Spanish wasn’t good enough to find out — and I was too tired to look it up in the translator, so I didn’t ask. Travel from Anchorage to northern Spain took thirty-four hours and three layovers. Maybe that’s a lot. It could be a shorter trip if we didn’t live so far north, but it is what it is.

Getting here meant half-sleeping upright in several uncomfortable airplane seats. First was the six hour red-eye from Anchorage to Denver that arrived at 7am. Then it was the overnight to Munich that left around 5pm — a ten hour layover, eleven hours on the plane and two swollen feet later and I was still jet-lagged in Germany. The flight to Bilbao was only two hours long, but I still fell asleep even though I planned to stay awake to try and adjust to the new time zone.

But none of that matters. Despite how it sounds, these are not complaints; I wrote this entry to say just the opposite. The chore of getting here is completely my fault, caused mostly by our decision to live in Alaska. Up north we have fewer conveniences and traveling is way more difficult, and that’s just the way it is. But often when we meet new people they don’t see it that way, they usually romanticize with the dissatisfaction of their lives the idea of being there. I’m immediately on guard when that happens because I know envy is just an indicator, and because I know my life is no different than yours.