5 Things I Learned in Mexico

1. I stood out more because I was wearing a (shudder) swim dress than I would have if I had been wearing a bikini.
2. No one cares what anyone else looks like (see #1).
3. My kids are awesome travelers.
4. *Steve is replaced by Esteban as soon as he hits Mexican soil.
5. It doesn't have to be a romantic trip to feel the love.

*This is invaluable and must be tested on other soils.  Does it work in Spain? Stefan in Germany?  Stefano in Italy?

Sweet are the Uses of Adversity

When I was young, maybe in middle school, I entered a writing contest sponsored by Penn State.  The prompt was the quote from Shakespeare's As You Like It and we were supposed to talk about what it meant to us.  I have no bloody idea what I wrote specifically, but I do know the quote has stayed with me ever since.  (For the record, I got an honorable mention and got to go to main campus for a very glamorous luncheon and received a handshake from the chair of the English department and a certificate.  It was cool.)

Anyway, while packing for a trip tomorrow, a trip unlike any my little family has ever been able to take (like, a fancy trip), the quote came to me again.  And it couldn't be more appropriate for how I feel about taking this trip at this time of year.  I'm not being dramatic when I say that last year at this time was the start of a  pretty horrific year for us and if someone had told me that our family would be happily taking this trip a mere 8 months later I would not have believed it.  So, in short, this trip is even more precious than it would normally be.  And though I am not ready to say (and will never be) that having Last Year happen was worth it because of how precious this feels, it does put things into a pretty wonderful perspective.  And I am grateful.

Let's GO

I am a confused person.  I loooooooooooove being at home (read the name of this blog--it's true!).  I revel in having my stuff all around me.  My comfy couch is by favorite place in the world.  And nothing makes me happier than when a plan to (gasp!) go somewhere gets cancelled.  For the most part, I like my people to come to me. But I also long to travel to places that are decidedly different than my home with an ache inside that feels very real.  I want to see how other people live.  I want to eat with them and talk with them about their families.  I want to GO.

In short, I want to be [Anthony Bourdain].

I started traveling at a young age when I was lucky enough to be best friends with a girl who was an only child and who also traveled every summer with her mom and godmother in a de-lux motor home.  Because she was an only child, her mother thought it would be much more fun for her to have a friend along.  ME!

So, three summers in a row I traveled for the better part of a month with them.  Across the US to California.  Up New England and down South.  It was awesome.  I did go through bouts of homesickness (one time calling my mom from a pay phone in South Dakota and snotting myself crying so much I threw up) but mostly I loved it.  I was seven years old when I started traveling with them and I still remember so much.  Remembering the traveling was almost as fun as the traveling itself. And no American kid should get to grown-up age without seeing the [Corn Palace] or the Badlands.  This country is awesome.

That, on the outside of the building, is corn. I shit you not.

Now I want to travel abroad.  I've been to Europe once, on a whirlwind trip in high school (5 countries in 9 days!), but it was only a taste.  A tease, really.  Standing on the street in [Verona, Italy] I thought oh yeah.  I could get used to this place, this feeling of being foreign and interested and excited about everything around me.

There is almost no place I don't want to go.  Of course I'd like to hit the hot spots like Paris or London.  I would love that.  But I'd also like to go off the beaten path.  To go to places where food is cooked over a fire or cars are a luxury.  I want to really get a feeling for where I am with the people who live there.  

Okay, maybe not here.  Yeah, I think I could do without a jungle experience because the idea that something alive  could drop off of something above me onto me is waaaay too freaky.

 That, my friends, is Madagasca TREE boa.  That hangs in trees.  *shiver*

But here.  YES.  I would love to go [here].

  Is it Russia or is it China?  It's more like BOTH.  Feast your eyes on Harbin, China.

Or [here...]

Or, holy crap, [HERE!]

In my fantasies I have a [fixer] like Tony or [Ewan] do on their adventures.  A fixer would make the most foreign places a teensy less scary simply because he/she would know the local language and be able to speak to me in English.  Tell me which meat-on-a-stick in Harbin, China is the chicken and which is the ["baby butterfly."]  Paying for a fixer would be money well spent.

But I'm not going to let not having a fixer stop me from going. My husband can talk to ANYONE.  I'm hoping that his talent for gabbing and mine for making-the-most-of-it will translate to good traveling when these damn kids move out.  And the we'll come home to talk about it.