Wrapping Up… Part Six

Traveling with my family over the past 15.5 months has been an experience I’ll always cherish. It’s sad that it had to come to an end, but we have been forever changed as individuals and as a family, and in that way our adventure lives on. We’ve seen such remarkable growth in all our boys this year in their understanding of the world and how to navigate various situations. Even more important than that, they’ve grown closer to us and closer to each other through this shared experience.

A few ways we’ve grown or important things we’ve learned are:

• how to get along (happily) with almost no personal space in an RV in Iceland
• driving large vehicles more than 15,000 miles across 24 countries, mostly on tiny roads that weren’t made with those vehicles in mind
• changing a flat tire on the peaks of Meteora in Greece
• studying recent examples of the depths of human depravity: WWII atrocities in Poland, genocide in Sarajevo and Cambodia, and the terrible consequences of war in Vietnam
• being bold ordering new foods, even bugs
• how to cross streets filled with constant traffic in Thailand and Vietnam
• bonding over activities like hiking, surfing, rock climbing, luging, kayaking, and completing treetop ropes courses
• figuring out that Offline maps on the Google Maps app make travelling without a phone plan so much easier

We’ve also made very meaningful connections with people:

• Peter, our Tanzanian safari driver who teared up (and made us all tear up) when we said goodbye
• The Arndts, an American mom and dad with two teenage children from Minnesota that we enjoyed talking to for quite a while as we waited in line with for the Vatican Museum in Rome
• Marissa, an American athlete playing professional basketball in Poland who we met at church in Gdansk and who we hoped would visit us later on in our trip before the pandemic interrupted things
• Virag, a Hungarian waffle shop owner in Budapest who invited Anya behind the counter several different days to talk all about her business and equipment
• Zlatko, our Bosnian apartment owner in Sarajevo who shared his personal account of the 1990s siege, even showing us his bullet wound; he also became my personal translator for hours after our car was broken into
• Dr. Stajcic, the incredible Serbian surgeon who fixed Keegan’s “tongue bump” in Belgrade
• New and Van, our Thai barista friends from our favorite coffee shop in Bangkok who made us all personalized wallets and a handmade guide to Chiang Mai
• Angela, a New Zealander moving from London to Australia with her husband and daughter who we rock-climbed with at Railay Beach in Thailand 
• Dennis and Suzanne, an American couple from New York we shared a songthaew with to and from spending a day together at an elephant sanctuary near Chiang Mai, and who we also had dinner with a couple nights later
• Xayphone, our Laotian Mekong River slowboat guide who we met up with for dinner a couple times in Luang Prabang
• Chris+Florence and Paul+Allison, two English couples we met on the slowboat who we kept in touch with and had dinner with in Luang Prabang (both), Saigon (Paul+Alison), and Penang (Paul+Alison)—we had an instant connection as Chris, Paul, and I all worked in insurance risk management (Chris is even a fellow actuary)
• Jeff, Trish, and Zach, a wonderful American family from Chicago also traveling the world we met while teaching English in Luang Prabang and who we later met up with again in Hoi An
• a Vietnamese man whose name I didn’t catch in Saigon who I chatted with for several minutes in a coffee shop even though he spoke no English and I spoke no Vietnamese… somehow our “conversation” flowed easily and we made a connection while not having a clue what each other was saying
• Yung, our Indonesian driver in Bali who was so fun and so hilarious and infected all of us with her laughter
• Salman and Louis, our British apartment owner in Edinburgh and his son who hosted us for dinner in Geneva (where they’re living while Salman is working for the United Nations)

The consequence of making lists like this is inevitably leaving off people, places, and memories that should be included, but it’s also such a joy to reflect on our experiences and interactions and see at least a partial compilation of some of the most significant ones.

Thank you all for reading along and being with us on our journey through comments, texts, emails, visits(!), video calls, Marco Polos, etc. Your messages, prayers, and support have meant so much. We’ve also had an unbelievable amount of generosity and love shown to us upon returning home that has blown us away and has definitely made our transition back easier to bear.

As I’m trying to figure out what I want my final words to be, I don’t think I can say it better than one of my favorite travel quotes, so I’ll wrap it up this way!

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind. –Anthony Bourdain