Incunabulum

Incunabulum- (n) the earliest stages or first traces of anything.

This is a page that uses words. Learning new words is fun, right?
This page will use words, sometimes accompanied by pictures, to chronicle a journey. In a few days, I will step onto an airplane and fly to the other side of the world, leaving family, friends, and the familiarity of American culture behind. I am going to the Republic of South Africa for one academic year and I hope my life will be turned inside-out by the time I return.

My hopes are to use this page as a communication interface with friends and family at home. I would like to check in with the Yanks now and again, to confirm I haven't been devoured by hippopotami and the like. I would also like to take the opportunity (that's not a new word to you, but it's a big one in my life) to keep a digital record of my adventure. Part travel-log, part journal, part sounding board for new ideas and experiences. It may arguably last longer than a carbon-based, thread-bound notebook full of doodles and half-finished thoughts. Well, no promises. Not yet. This is merely the beginning.


I am going for a multitude of reasons, which I'll probably entail later (Spoilers!), but the foremost in my reasoning mind is to further my education as a zoologist. The skull in the background is that of Toxodon platensis, a late Pleistocene era mammal that resembled a modern day rhinoceros. See? More new words. Although, those are in Latin and neither you nor I will be held responsible for them. The sketch is actually one from Darwin's own hand, from a procurement in Argentina while upon the H.M.S. Beagle.

I have a meeting with a flying metal machine in nine days and fourteen hours. Until then, I will probably put more words on this page. Mostly English, maybe some Latin, maybe some Xhosa or Afrikaans. 

This is merely the start, but this is the end of the start. Come with me?