Hello Everyone!
This blog has really gotten away from what I wanted it to be and resembles more of the stuff I do on Facebook than anything...and this was not my goal or intent. We originally started this blog with the hopes of keeping our family and friends feeling close and connected to us though we were living so far away in Hawaii, to show that while we are thousands of miles away, that they are intimately and actively involved with what is going on with our lives. Life has become so busy and rushed lately, that I just post picts in a hurried fashioned at 4am before heading out to work. This is what I do with Facebook and it just feels so impersonal.
So this is a fresh attempt, with the latest and greatest from our Spain and Portugal trip. The trip was 10 days of the most absolutely wonderful sites and foods and experiences with the greatest man in the world. We both really needed a break, a sigh of relief, a breath of fresh air, some serious relaxation, and we definitely found it all on our trip. All I can say is that these two countries should be on everyones MUST VISIT list and that 10 days is not nearly enough time...I don't think a year would be enough time though.
So I am really going to take my time with these posts, separating out the days, to truly give you a glimpse of our experiences. Hopefully I will be able to show you why we are so obsessed with traveling as much as possible, being busy with new experiences with any free time with have, and to show why we so driven to never sit still or stay in the same place for too long. We know that we are not what our family and friends expected us to be, hell we never saw ourselves living this nomadic life, but it is who we are and love being.
Adam shared a post with me from Reddit once that completely embodies everything that I feel about our lives and traveling and I want to share it with you, it is called the Traveler's Curse:
The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. In fact, each place has a smaller and smaller percentage of the things you love, the more things you see. It drives you, even subconsciously, to keep looking, for a place not that's perfect (we all know there's no Shangri-La), but just for a place that's "just right for you." But the curse is that the odds of finding "just right" get smaller, not larger, the more you experience. So you keep looking even more, but it always gets worse the more you see. This is Part A of the Curse.
Part B is relationships. The more you travel, the more numerous and profoundly varied the relationships you will have. But the more people you meet, the more diffused your time is with any of them. Since all these people can't travel with you, it becomes more and more difficult to cultivate long term relationships the more you travel. Yet you keep traveling, and keep meeting amazing people, so it feels fulfilling, but eventually, you miss them all, and many have all but forgotten who you are. And then you make up for it by staying put somewhere long enough to develop roots and cultivate stronger relationships, but these people will never know what you know or see what you've seen, and you will always feel a tinge of loneliness, and you will want to tell your stories just a little bit more than they will want to hear them. The reason this is part of the Curse is that it gets worse the more you travel, yet travel seems to be a cure for a while.
None of this is to suggest that one should ever reduce travel. It's just a warning to young Travelers, to expect, as part of the price, a rich life tinged with a bit of sadness and loneliness, and angst that's like the same nostalgia everyone feels for special parts of their past, except multiplied by a thousand.
One of the things I finally accomplished that I have been wanted for a really long time is a world map that we could put pins in to mark all of the places that we have been together. It took a while to find one that would be perfect for us, but I finally did and it now hangs on the wall at the foot of our bed...so we can just lay there and reminisce of all the places we have been and plan for all of the places yet to go. You can see the picts of the map below, we have excluded any places that we did not go together, since it is a map of our life's journey together.
So please enjoy the new formatting of the blog and bear with me as the postings will be slower to come up with the additional effort. Know that we love you and miss you and love sharing all of our experiences with you!
I am excited because we already have some trips planned for 2013:
Ecuador to visit Adam's cousin Kara when she studies abroad in the Spring
England, Ireland, Scotland to accomplish more of Europe (the goal is to be done with Europe/Africa before moving back to Hawaii since the trip would be SO far at that point and also why we aren't so focused on Asia so much) and to be there for the Steeler game in London.
I am so blessed and obsessed with this life we have.