My friend Andrew made a post in his training journal about being excited to use racing as an excuse to travel in 2019. He said he's never been on a plane and only left Florida twice. Got me thinking about traveling and about how much I take for granted my own experience of it. When Linc came to visit last year, he hadn't been overseas in a few years, since he visited Alex in South Korea. He was nervous about arriving in a strange country and extremely relieved that SRB and I were waiting for him outside the terminal. M&D went to England four years (?) ago and haven't been overseas since. They are coming in April and they'll stop in Istanbul on the way for a couple of days, an adventure they would not likely be planning if I hadn't decided to live 7,000 miles away.
Meanwhile, I've built my life around traveling. SRB is even more extreme: apart from living in Pakistan, her mother, father, sister, and brothers all live in different countries (South Africa, France, Australia, UK), and as she becomes part of my family that's another country altogether (US, obviously). If we stay together over the long term, even if we settle down somewhere and leave the field we're in, which requires international travel, we'll still have to fly long distances to visit family.
One of the reasons I was interested in international development as a field coming out of college was that I wanted to get paid to travel and eventually live overseas again. I was less than a year removed from living in Chile when I got my first job and itching to see new places. Eleven years later, that mission is well and truly accomplished. I'll finish 2018 having flown nearly 90,000 miles and having been to ten countries (^ = my first time there):
Meanwhile, I've built my life around traveling. SRB is even more extreme: apart from living in Pakistan, her mother, father, sister, and brothers all live in different countries (South Africa, France, Australia, UK), and as she becomes part of my family that's another country altogether (US, obviously). If we stay together over the long term, even if we settle down somewhere and leave the field we're in, which requires international travel, we'll still have to fly long distances to visit family.
One of the reasons I was interested in international development as a field coming out of college was that I wanted to get paid to travel and eventually live overseas again. I was less than a year removed from living in Chile when I got my first job and itching to see new places. Eleven years later, that mission is well and truly accomplished. I'll finish 2018 having flown nearly 90,000 miles and having been to ten countries (^ = my first time there):
- Pakistan
- USA
- Tajikistan
- Portugal^
- UK
- Singapore
- Malaysia^
- South Africa^
- Botswana^
- Namibia^
Pretty cool. I've been incredibly lucky.
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