An American Abroad: Travelversary

Yup, I just made that word up.

It has been two years since Luke and I embarked on this open ended trip (although when we left it was not open ended). As we reflect over our last two years on this travelversary it is almost surreal to comprehend how much we have done and seen. We have lived in two different countries, experienced city living, suburban living, country living, and living out of a car! We have "started over" in three cities and seen more wild animals in the wild than I have probably seen in captivity.

Since the start of the trip I have kept a pretty comprehensive notebook on what we get up to so that I can remember one day how ~~cool~~ brave I used to be. Its easy to look back on all the major things we did like experience earthquakes, jump out of planes, walk on glaciers, hike around a volcano (that just erupted a few weeks ago FYI), and explore some of the worlds most famous cities, but when I re-read the notes I have written it reminds of the little things. Things like how cold it was to sleep in our car some nights and how we learned how to tell whether it would be a cold night before even getting the car to sleep or how frustrated we were and how much we struggled when we first arrived in Sydney. When I read it I am also reminded of all of the amazing, hilarious, ridiculous, and sometimes rude people we have met along the way.

I wish I didn't need a travelversary to remind myself to look around and soak all of this in while its happening, but I'm glad it has come around. In the last few weeks I think I've gotten all too caught up in the stresses of being "settled" somewhere. We haven't explored new lands, besides a cafe around the corner, in a while and I can feel myself getting itchy feet. We have a few things in the pipeline at the moment for the foreseeable future and I am getting very excited to get out and explore, so I will let you know once we have actually set some plans.