I have been dating my boyfriend Tom Bosworth (whose picture can be found in my first post for those interested) for about a year and a half. I met him at Flagler, we spend a lot of time on campus together and all around St. Aug. Since he graduated last April he decided to move to Massachusetts in August so I had to get through my last year of college without him, which sucked. As if the stress of portfolio class wasnt enough, I had the stress of a long distance relationship.
Leaving St. Augustine (which will happen in exactly 6 days) means a lot to me. Not only am I graduating college, I am also leaving a place a have LOVED living and friends I will miss dearly. And while it is exciting to graduate and I am ready to move on with my life there is still a part of me that is sad I have to leave.
Aside from the sadness related with leaving there is also immense excitement. The prospect of looking for a job is daunting but thrilling, and as much as I love being in school I am so excited to be out of here. I am going to get to see my boyfriend on a daily basis. I havent been able to spend more than a few days at a time with him since August.
Everywhere I go in St. Augustine I am reminded of conversations we've had or things we've done, there is not one inch of this town we havent covered. We often spent our nights wandering the streets and enjoying the ambiance that is St. Augustine.
In order to memorialize (in a way) leaving St. Augustine I created a map of all the places we spent time together. Places that I can't walk by or go to without thinking of him. Places that will always be in my mind. Years from now when I come back here to visit I will still be reminded of him when I stand next to the fort or when I walk down Aviles street.
I decided not to just make a map.
As anyone who has been here for more than 10 minutes can tell tourism is a large part of St. Augustine. The tour trains pass by every few minutes, there are tour groups always being lead through the streets including ghost and pirate tours (which reminds me, one time I was walking down San Marco when I came across a car accident that had just happened, there were already a large number of spectators and being that I wouldn't want people watch my body being scraped off the street I kept walking and didn't look, but then I walked past a group of pirate tour guides who apparenty were the only witnesses of the accident, it felt like something out of Seinfeld, the only witnesses were 10 pirates, WHAT) so I wanted to make my own tour map, some of these places are places I take people when they come here to visit, others are just places that are memorable to me.
Currently I have 10 maps printed, I am out of prints for the semester and can't afford to have this printed but I do have my little HP printer which is working very hard to give me as many copies as possible. For the time being I will just leave copies around town (photos to come)
