Oh Hey, Remember Me?

Hi there. 

It has been 2.5 years since I last went on an international excursion, and I definitely have felt it: the longing to see something new, something different. Something other than the 43534 photos of Portugal that everyone is posting on social media (I swear, 90% of my friends who have been abroad in the last 2 years have gone to Portugal, I need to see something different). 

I haven't done any international travel since Melbourne in January 2020. I mean, I was living in Vanuatu until March 2020, when we all were abruptly sent home to the USA with a 48 hour notice. So, that insane, tear-filled evacuation of my entire living situation/work life/social life/home of three years was international travel, right? Ha.

The New Year celebration of 2021 was the first new year I spent at home in over five years. I was very aware of this, how I was sitting at home, doing nothing, when I'd previously been riding inflatable pool swans in New Caledona (NYE 2020), 

watching Māori Haka dancers with my friend Calvin in Nauru (NYE 2019), 

sleeping through festivities with a 103*F fever in Vanuatu (NYE 2018), 

eating ice cream in a bar that a drunk man ordered for us in Saint Petersburg, Russia (NYE 2017),  

and drinking champagne from a paper cup and doing vodka shots with our hotel owners in Bukhara, Uzbekistan (NYE 2016). 

So, no international travel since "The Big Sad" as my fellow PCV calls it, but that doesn't mean I haven't traveled. 

• In August 2020, I went up to Denver to visit my Peace Corps friends who live there, and we had a little reunion of about 12 of us.

• In May 2021, I took the Amtrak on a little day trip up to Milwaukee.

• In November 2021, I had another Peace Corps reunion to celebrate our PCV friend Cameron's wedding near Philadelphia. 

• This January, my Aussie friend Bill came to visit me here in Chicago, and we roadtripped to the Maker's Mark distillery in Kentucky, then went to Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, over to the Space Center in Houston, then on to Austin. Oh and we also went to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas (and even got to drive down the Vegas Strip in our Mustang convertible, which made us feel pretty cool). It was amazing to be able to show him the classic American road trip, and the diversity of the cities here. 

• In June, I had another Peace Corps reunion, again in Denver, and then in New Hampshire for G29. For the G29 reunion, we all flew into Boston, and I spent some time there, and then in DC after the reunion (in total reuniting with about 22 PCVs from Vanuatu). 

Bill and I planned to go to Canada during his trip to the USA, but due to Covid restrictions, we would have been stuck in our hotel room for a majority of the trip (at the time, they had a 7pm curfew, and restaurants were closed). 

And despite all of the aforementioned travel, the only place out of ALL of that that was new, that I had never been to ever before, was New Hampshire. So yeah, I definitely took advantage of seeing all the sights, like the location of the first-ever-reported alien abduction. 

If you're a traveler like me, then this story isn't new. Covid sucked. Ending Peace Corps abruptly sucked. Going to old places for new adventures was just alright. Seeing old friends was ok, but that itch to share new experiences with complete strangers was left unscratched. 

I am ready for my next adventure, and I already have one planned. Stay tuned.