How My Blog Got Its Name

Fair warning: this is a somewhat long story that probably doesn't require as much background as I'm going to give.  But alas, here I go.

The cathedral in Santiago de Compostela

In the Spring of 2010, I made my second trip to Spain, this time as a student.  I was with one of my school's study abroad programs, and our trip was about the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James).  We lived for 3 weeks in Madrid and then spent a week in Galicia being peregrinos.  We walked the last 65km or so of the pilgrimage in 3 days, arriving on our last day in beautiful Santiago de Compostela.

The next day, our group traveled to A Coruña, a city at the northwestern tip of Spain.  Our TA, a woman named Ado, had grown up there and her family still lives there.  We spent the best part of our day on the beach, and Ado's brother came to hang out with us and practice his English.

A view of A Coruña from a lighthouse

A group of about 6 of us were sitting and chatting about something (truth be told, I don't remember what) when, in response to something someone had said, Ado's brother spoke the words "no panic in the Titanic."  We all looked at each other in confusion, none of us had heard the idiom before and frankly it made little sense.  I'm pretty sure people on the Titanic were probably panicking.  We asked him about it, and he was shocked to learn that it was not a part of everyday American speech.

I really like the way the phrase just rolls off the tongue, so I adopted it and use it pretty frequently as an alternative to 'no worries' or 'que será, será' as a small tribute to this fabulous trip.  I know that it's not quite right, that "no panic on the Titanic" would be better, but that's the way it was said to me.  It would feel wrong to change it.  So now, as a I return to Spain for the first time since that experience, what better way to begin?