Reentry

Last night, Craig calculated that we had been in our new apartment for more than 28 nights, meaning it was the longest we had stayed in one place and slept in the same bed in 18 months. “Does it feel weird to you that we’re here?” he asked, hands on hips, looking around at our living room space.

“Yes,” I responded. “Very.”

It’s also the end of our second week of going back to work, and I have been feeling a little discombobulated about how “same same different different” everything is. We’ve moved into an apartment several blocks north of where we have lived before, and that brings with it an even stronger déjà vu feeling, evoking a time over ten years in the past when we lived in this same three-block radius, but in separate apartments and before our first “sabbatical” to South America.

Since we’ve returned to the US, life has seemed to flow in starts in stops. Find an apartment, then wait for the move in date. Get a start date for our jobs, then wait for the day to arrive. But as the date of our first day of work neared, I knew that the flow would change drastically. Those days of nothing to do but find a couple of meals were over.

Craig and I have talked ad nauseum about not working and the way it can change one’s mindset. Now we are in a position to see how the reverse will affect us. I think there has been a slight desperation in the way we’ve viewed the time we have left, as it slips through our fingers like drops of water. There is now the sense of cramming in all the things we want to do in the drastically reduced hours in which we have to do them.

Along with the struggle to give time to our hobbies is the very real fact that with “real life,” the amount of tasks exponentially increases. Grocery shopping, household chores, preparing lunches for work, cooking dinner, buying things for the apartment… these are all things that take up so much of our time now and they’re all things we either never or rarely had to do during our time off. Of course we had to do other things while traveling, like booking lodging and transportation, etc., but the repetitive and constant nature of the tasks in our “real life” is much more striking.

It is also amazing how so many of our tasks are directly related to being settled in a place and attached to all of the things in it. The more we have, the more we have to do to maintain it all. It’s funny to think about needing a second spatula when for over a year all we had was what fit into our backpacks–a spatula was definitely never a part of our packing lists.

So many of the terms related to working have rodents in them: the “hamster wheel,” the “rat race.” As we’ve been transitioning, I’ve noticed how easy it is to mindlessly fill free time with activities. There’s always someone to hang out with or something to do, especially in a city with established friends. Craig and I have been trying not to fill our time up with too much since something we have honed to perfection is just quietly sitting around and doing quiet things like reading and crafting. Still, even with this conscious effort, we have realized why some of our friends have responded to our requests to hang out with availability 3-4 weeks out. Sometimes even two months out! Or they respond days or weeks later.

“What is everyone doing that makes them so busy?” we wondered when we first got back, staying with our very generous friends and twiddling our thumbs, waiting for our apartment lease to start. But as we immersed ourselves more and more in our new life, moving in, starting our jobs, meeting up with people, it has become more and more apparent why everyone is so busy. Work, for one, takes up an inordinate amount of time. I really do sometimes feel like a lab mouse, going through a maze just so I can get the cheese, a.k.a. the paycheck.

But there is also this pressure to maximize time off. We are trying to resist it, as it seems like an impulse manufactured by our consumerist society in order to feel as if we’re making the most of our time. What does it even mean to “waste time”? Is hanging around our apartment reading manga a waste of time if I’m enjoying myself? It was easy to let go of the guilt involved in “doing nothing” when there literally wasn’t much to do but venture out into 90-degree heat and find a vermicelli bowl. Now, I can feel the urge welling up inside me to do something, anything “productive” because the precious hours are dwindling.

So the reentry has been an exercise in restraint. In not throwing ourselves immediately back into the squirrel cage, to not find ourselves suddenly with no time to think about the complexities of the human experience. It took a long time and a lot of hard work for me to figure some things out about myself, like how to communicate better, how to be less anxious about interpersonal interactions, and how to give myself grace. I don’t want to suddenly find myself with insomnia again, worrying at nights about some conversation with a friend or colleague that day, wondering if I did or said the “right” thing.

I want to do fun things like everyone else–going out, hanging with friends, doing activities, crafting, etc., but I don’t want to do it at the expense of this hard-earned self-knowledge. Neither of us wanted to keep traveling after the 18 months we’ve had. We were weary of being on the road. Real life is something we desired; the routine, the apartment, the possessions. Maybe even the jobs to some extent, although we both wish we could work fewer hours per week. But the transition has been a little scary.

During our time off, we had a repeated sentiment–“I don’t want to go back and feel as if we never left.” That’s the struggle at the moment. Trying not to reenter our new lives too quickly and forget what it was like to be okay with just sitting around, doing nothing.

Doing nothing memories from our Melbourne Airbnb.

Limbo

We’re back. But then, we’re not really back back. Not yet. Because we don’t have an apartment and we haven’t started going to our jobs. We haven’t rejoined the stream, so to speak. Of course, this is by design. Because we just got back. We need a cushion, to sort things out. Like, what furniture did we give away anticipating finally making an upgrade? And, how are we supposed to commute to our jobs? And then, on a slightly different level, how are we supposed to get used to having less free time? I’m talking radically less free time, which, during this sabbatical, has been our biggest asset, the one thing we have had in abundance at nearly all times. It has meant that we don’t think twice about taking the slowest way to get somewhere (the other day, when looking at bus routes, Sheena said, “wow Route 106 goes all the way to Renton. That would be interesting to take.”). And we gamely cook elaborate meals, on a weekday. I worry about the transition.

So we’re in limbo. No longer traveling, but not back yet. It’s not the most comfortable position to occupy, but it’s not uninteresting. For one thing, I am confronted with the way that our lives have become increasingly scheduled. Our free time, increasingly scheduled. Question: is it free time if it all has to be scheduled? Is it free time if you have to make dinner plans more than a month out, like a dentist appointment? I get it, everyone is busy. We all want to make sure that we can accomplish as much as possible in the times that we aren’t dedicating ourselves to something we have to do. But from my perspective it seems to have reached overwhelming levels. Is there any time when we (collectively) aren’t doing something anymore? Like, no television, no movies, no podcasts. Just sitting, thinking, maybe allowing a little music. I did feel this way before we left, always weary of scheduling too many social calls during a week, always wondering how I could increase the presence of silence in my life. But when you have been away for so long the contrast upon returning is stark.

I recently read a book called “Hanging Out” by Sheila Liming. Taking two minutes to read reviews of the book and you will probably determine that it isn’t worth your time. I’m not sure it was worth mine. I didn’t like it very much. But there is a peculiar thing about reading: you don’t actually have to like something (or agree with something) to get something out of it. In fact, if you are constantly thinking about why a book is wrong, or how a book is unfocused, or what points a book misses, then you are also being forced to think about the subject and you might make some progress in understanding it. And that’s about the sum of how reading “Hanging Out” went for me. The concept of a “third place,” which, having worked in urban design-adjacent fields for a little while now, is not a foreign term to me, was discussed, and I found myself thinking about how this may have contributed to our time in the wonderland that is called Sevilla.

Since leaving that city, I have periodically thought back to it with great fondness. Not because I particularly liked the physical city (although it was nice), or the food (also nice), or the weather (once again, pretty nice), but because of the social scene that we somehow found ourselves inserted into, thanks to our friends. We were graciously invited to every social gathering that was occurring amongst their group, which included watching soccer matches, going to regular bar hangouts, eating random meals, having random beers, and traveling to nearby cities on the weekend. This felt gracious because we don’t speak Spanish perfectly and there was always something a little halting and disjointed about our communication when we hung out. But I don’t think we were a burden to them. And with the rare exception of one trip to Jerez, I’m not sure they planned anything specifically to entertain us. We were just included in what was already happening. And this was what was marvelous, because it turns out that Sevilla is basically one giant third place. As they said at the time, “we live in the streets.” And you can do this, in Sevilla, because it has an abundance of cafes with huge amounts of informal seating in public spaces, because the food and drink is quite cheap, and because the weather is (with the exception of summer) mild and warm. The knock-on effect, it seemed, was that it was easy to gather people together in a much more relaxed, much more informal way, such that the addition of extra people, whether they were foreigners or not, was nothing out of the ordinary and didn’t change the formula.

It would be interesting to see Jaime and Pilar’s Google calendars, to see if they have any social events noted on them. Why would you need to if you know that on Fridays at 2pm you meet at a certain bar, a bar that has been there for 50 years, on a plaza that has been there for 400 years, a steady and reliable place that will not change anytime soon, which affords cheap beverages and ample seating and, most importantly, shade. And why would you need to note that for every Sevilla FC match you will be hosting people on your azotea, where light tapas will be provided and where litros of Cruzcampo will be brought for sharing. And why would you need to note that you will be going to a certain bar on the plaza next to Las Setas, on a certain night, when you could easily just respond to your friend’s text message that you receive when you are already there, letting them know where you are, and than they will just pop over for a quick drink later, because basically everyone you know lives within walking distance of the city center.

Perhaps I’m thinking that the shape of this city, and most US cities, is to blame for our predicament. While being relatively easy to get around, Seattle is still far larger than it needs to be, and far less dense than it could be. We keep finding our friends moving to outlying neighborhoods, which necessitates planning hangouts because we would otherwise never find ourselves there by happenstance. And for all the parks and waterfront that we have here, it still seems like there isn’t enough places to go where one can cheaply meet up and shoot the shit, especially in bad weather. Our cafe culture is abysmal, our restaurants are expensive, and our public seating (and bathroom) situation non-existent. Amazingly, I think back to all those popular indoor malls with obscene amounts of cheap food, which were so popular in Asian and Australian cities, and think that that would be an improvement. I have said to Sheena that I would like to find a way to keep unstructured, unscheduled time in our lives. Again and again we have found that there are rewards for doing this, mostly in the area of self-reflection. But we can’t avoid the scheduled nature of social hangouts in this city (we already have something booked for a weekend in June!). I like the idea of being a regular somewhere, of having a certain night where we always go to a certain place. And I like the idea of trying to become better friends with the people who live closest to me. We are moving back to the same neighborhood that we have always lived in, so it seems that these are goals that are within reach.

In the meantime, I continue to live in this state of limbo, a state that Julien Gracq says affords “imaginative communication with reality,” and I continue to try and profit by it.

We profit, in part, by trying to find the good Vietnamese food in Seattle

Things

When I was in second grade, I won a cup in a school-wide reading challenge. It was inexplicably shaped like a beer stein, and was of a clear plastic and had my school’s logo on it (our mascots were dragons–so cool, right?). This became MY cup and I exclusively used it for everything. I think it got pretty disgusting and became more and more opaque as the years went by, but I didn’t care.

Also while growing up, I latched onto a certain spoon. It was the only spoon from my parents’ first silverware set in the US that survived for more than a few years, and it had a red plastic handle, which is how I could differentiate it from other spoons. Similar to my cup, I used it for all spoon-related consumption, and if it was dirty, I would sigh and use some other inferior spoon with great reluctance.

One day, I came home from school and could not find my cup. I searched and searched, and finally, when my parents came home from work, I asked them if they had seen it. “Oh, we threw it out,” they said. “It was too dirty.” The same thing happened with my beloved red spoon on another sad day, but this time they told me it broke.

Ah, the lack of sentimentality in immigrant parents–they knew that these pieces of admittedly cheap kitchenware were sacred to me, but still, into the trash they went without even allowing me to bid them goodbye while shedding a few heartfelt tears. They were just gone, poof, never to be seen again, and I was expected to carry on as if dear friends had not just been dumped without any respect.

Childhood tragedy aside, the point I’m trying to make is that I get a little attached to material things. However, when you’re traveling with a small backpack, you just don’t get to have a lot of things. There becomes this push-pull of cherishing all of your belongings and not wanting to let them go, and also getting really sick of them. Must I wear this ragged t-shirt again? But if I lost it, what a pain to try and find another one without knowing where the good shops are, to have to pay for something unnecessary, to not know where I will be for it to be delivered.

Thus the lack of souvenirs from our trip. We bought very few things as we traveled and if we did, it was mostly to replace something that we had to throw out. The backpack space cost of my bespoke shirt from Hoi An was a shirt that I hadn’t worn much on our travels and was also eight years’ old; this was left in Da Lat. I had brought a $20 puffy jacket from Costco to Asia specifically so I could leave it guilt-free once I was sure I wouldn’t need it anymore; our Airbnb host in Saigon was puzzled but not unhappy about the unexpected “gift.”

This restriction on consumption is something that Craig and I have talked about in regard to a travel sabbatical versus a stay-at-home sabbatical. In terms of accommodation, we spent much less for a year and a half than we would have if we had stayed in Seattle; even if we added in transportation costs of all of our flights and trains, this amount would only be half of what our condo costs us in 18 months of mortgage, interest, HOA, taxes, and insurance. So globe-trotting was quite inexpensive in comparison to just renting or owning a place in Seattle. Of course if all of our time had been spent in Europe or if we hadn’t benefited from the generosity of free lodging from parents and friends, this would be a different story…

I have so far established that just staying in Seattle and not going anywhere would have cost more than traveling abroad the way we did. Food was, on average, a lot cheaper in the places we traveled to; even in Europe I wouldn’t say it was more expensive than Seattle. So I think we can safely say that the cost of feeding ourselves was also significantly lower than if we had stayed in Seattle.

On top of all of that, we had either a cargo limit on our eWellie (Honda Element) or a space restriction in our backpacks that prevented us from buying stuff. We still bought quite a lot of stuff that was specific to our travels, like a nice pair of shorts for Asia, that Costco puffy jacket I mentioned, etc., but I would say overall that our consumerism plummeted during the sabbatical. Not having a space of our own meant we didn’t have anywhere to put the things we purchased; the end result being that we didn’t really purchase much.

Now that we’re back in Seattle and consuming at normal pace once again, it has struck us that if we had taken time off from work but hadn’t had any restrictions on obtaining more and more goods, our 18 months would have been two or three times more expensive than what we actually did. So much of our everyday life is taken up with material goods; coveting them, earning money to buy them, using them, and then discarding them. Not being able to do any of this made me sad at times (I am just as materialistic as the next person!), but I think it allowed us to turn our thoughts to intangibles.

What is life without all of these things and a place to put them in? Sometimes it was difficult. There were innumerous shiny and cute things that I could have bought at various points in our travels, but considering that I hardly remember any of these things, the pang of regret in passing them by was short-lived. On the whole, out of all of the inconveniences of travel, this lack of goods and the purchase of them was the least arduous to endure. I think I also learned how to really enjoy window-shopping; appreciating items and then letting them go.

Since childhood, my nature has been to hold onto favorite objects because they can bring joy and comfort. After living with just what can fit in a 40-liter backpack, I think I’ve learned that I don’t have to own things in order to feel this joy and comfort. Perhaps it’s part of the move towards the tenets of mindfulness and Buddhism that I’ve started to make; recognizing the impermanence of objects and the feelings that they produce.

Still, I’m not a Buddhist monk, and there are lots of things that I will continue to buy, especially in this period of settling in, back here in Seattle. Like with all of the tiny self-improvements and growth that I think I’ve achieved during our time off, I am hoping that this will also stay with me. It’s a little bit scary, wading back into the land of rampant capitalism and online shopping; it’s so easy to just buy, buy, buy. Without so many things during the past year and a half, I’ve found a lot of freedom and peace in a life without constant consumption, and I’m worried of losing that. In the same way I clung to that spoon and cup, we shall see if I can cling onto the mindset of needing and wanting very little despite being back on the hamster wheel of a working American’s life.

When I think of all the malls and shops and markets we came away from empty-handed… It was really a feat of human strength and will!

Taking stock, part 2

Back in July, 2023, at the end of our time in Europe, I wrote about what I would now call our “travel rhythm,” which is something that has been a borderline obsession for me during this trip. I am constantly thinking of tweaks that could have been made to avoid various ills that are common during long-term travel, comparing and contrasting to other times that have been more, or less, successful, and pondering what I would do differently next time. In this vein, I have recently been thinking about the ~4 months we spent abroad in Asia and Australia, and I have found it useful and interesting to compare it with the ~4 months we spent in Europe last year.

The chart above shows a comparison between the rate at which we traveled during the Europe and Asia/Australia portions of the trip. What is immediately obvious is that we traveled to more places in Asia/Australia (38 versus only 26 in Europe) and, partly as a consequence, had fewer long stays. The reasons for this difference are not mysterious: in Europe we were very deliberate about selecting two cities for month-long stays, booking the apartments far in advance and planning the rest of the time around them. In contrast, Asia/Australia had only one pre-planned long-stay, which was reserved for Australia. This was something of a remnant from past planning ideas; originally, we thought we would go to Asia in the fall of 2022 as the first leg of the sabbatical, and Australia would represent a mid-trip respite, giving us something familiar and stable (and English-speaking). Maybe we would have traveled for 2 months, then spent one month in Sydney, and then turned around and spent another 2 months in Asia. That was the idea at least. But since COVID-related impacts still existed in the fall of 2022, we flipped Baja to the front, and reserved Asia for last; the idea of Australia was always attached to Asia, and so we kept it there.

Sunset at Wallabi Point

Could we, or should we, have gone to Sydney earlier, placing it in the middle of the 4 months we were in Asia? Yes, I suppose we could have. Our friends generously agreed to host us in Sydney, which may have inadvertently made that sojourn feel less “locked-in” compared to our European apartments. Since we planned only ~1 month ahead of time while we were in Asia, and since we didn’t even book our flight to Sydney until we were already in Vietnam (mostly because we didn’t know where we would be flying from), our time in Australia was always a bit too fluid. The original idea was a full month, but over time that was shortened to three weeks, and even that was broken up into shorter chunks with side trips that were both planned and unplanned.

This all has major shades of South America circa 2014, and we probably should have known better. We did have the presence of mind to book a two-week stay in Hanoi when we were in Taiwan, already sensing that we were moving too fast and that we would surely need a break. We also stayed for a solid week in Ho Chi Minh City, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. But both of those were cities that were unfamiliar, where we didn’t speak the language, which I’m sure contributed to our reluctance to select one ahead of time and “lock it in” for a full month. Having now traveled through a portion of China and SE Asia, it is clear to me that Hong Kong or Bangkok would have been ideal places to spend a long-stay (and perhaps they will serve in that role in some future trip), but they were just as opaque to me while planning.

On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City

I also wonder about the impact of what we were doing before each of these trips. In advance of Europe, Sheena and I spent some time apart, and during that time each of us did a fair bit of relaxing (or, in my case, not moving or talking, ha!). It’s possible that this, combined with the more structured rhythm, contributed to a more satisfying 4 months abroad. In contrast, before we left for Asia we had our Pacific Northwest summer, which in all likelihood was longer than it needed to be (October isn’t really summer, is it?), and we were not deliberate about spending a prolonged period of time apart. I think it’s possible that the former led us to decide to travel more intensely, without as much structure, because we had sat a little too idle for too long; perhaps the latter made all of that harder on us than it needed to be.

So, at the end of all this, what have we learned? There is no denying the success of our month-long stays in Europe, and I think we need to have a goal of incorporating pre-planned stays of that style in the future; the obvious road block is when we need to select a city that we haven’t previously visited, in which case it’s likely best for us to select the largest and most urban one (definitely not one the size of Cafayate, say). We have learned that some time apart is well spent and that I have a bit more capacity and desire for intensive (and uncomfortable) travel than Sheena does. This makes us wonder if next time it would make sense for Sheena to stay longer in a familiar city while I go travel for a period of weeks in a place where less comfort would be expected. Lastly, some amount of time spent at home, with family, in a known environment, was very appreciated during our travels and I think it’s worth incorporating again in the future. All of this is pretty academic though, because at the moment I’m so travel fatigued that I yearn for a boring and routine life at home.

Sunset on Cat Ba, Vietnam

Train stats

The XPT from Albury to Sydney

This is the first of what I expect to be several “post-trip” entries as the number of remaining sabbatical days dwindle. Since traveling by train was an organizing principal at various points during our travels, I thought it would be interesting to look at some statistics. Not including commuter or metro-type, inner-city travel, we ended up taking 33 different trains during the last year; our first was the Paris to Marseilles journey on March 7th, 2023, and our last was the Albury to Sydney journey on February 23rd, 2024. Here are some quick numbers:

• Most expensive: London to Paris Eurostar, $0.35 per km
• Cheapest: Aranyapratheth to Bangkok, $0.01 per km
• Fastest: Paris to Marseilles, 232 km/hr average
• Slowest: Veliko Tarnovo to Bucharest, 33 km/hr average
• Longest trip (time): Istanbul to Sofia, 13.5 hours
• Longest trip (distance): Paris to Marseilles, 812 km
• “My time is money”: London to Paris Eurostar, $53.33 per hour
• “Almost free”: Aranyapratheth to Bangkok, $0.27 per hour

Aranyaprateth to Bangkok train

The above numbers describe the extremes of the trips we took, but the bulk of our journeys (22 of them) were taken in Bulgaria, Romania, Taiwan, and Vietnam. All but two of these trips were taken on state-owned railroads that set the cost per kilometer of travel between 7 cents and 4 cents*. The express trains in Taiwan averaged about $6.30 per hour of travel, while the local Taiwanese and all of the Balkan trains were similarly about $2.60 per hour of travel. Vietnamese trains were the slowest, which meant that they averaged about $1.60 per hour of travel.

A graphical analysis of train costs

Boarding the Istanbul to Sofia Express

Other considerations which easily set these various systems apart are: the availability of food, the condition of on-board bathrooms, and the comfort of the seats. Many trains had no food available for purchase, so it’s relatively easy to say that the Vietnamese trains had the best food available; surprisingly, the train from Albury to Sydney had pretty good meals and snacks, which places it safely in second. Regarding bathrooms, we all know that Bulgaria was the worst, with the Aranyaprateth to Bangkok train coming in second; Taiwanese, French, and Spanish trains likely had the best bathrooms, although I appreciated the separate sink areas on the Vietnamese trains, which were always clean and had a bar of soap next to the tap. As for seat comfort, the Taiwanese trains likely win because the seats always faced forward (they rotate), and because the length of journey was never butt-numbingly long; the French and Spanish trains also had pretty comfortable seats, and I am a little partial to the first class cabins on the Bulgarian trains as well.

*boarder crossing trains between Bulgaria and Romania were a little more expensive, 10 cents per km

Waiting for the train to Taitung

Unpacking the packing

I doubt anybody is interested in one more post about packing, but here it is anyway! I’ve been thinking a lot about what I brought to Europe, and I think I’m pretty happy with the way everything turned out. Of course, there are some kinks in the pack list to be worked out, but all of that stressing over what to bring and what to leave behind seems to have paid off, which is very gratifying.

All my things for four months… Except for what I was wearing when I took the photo.

Craig, being a man, did not really stress out about his packing (his stress was more of the general travel anxiety). His backpack was the same size as mine but ended up weighing significantly less and also had five books in it at the journey’s beginning. How that was possible I’m still not sure since he also carried the laptop. Still, we were both faced with the same dilemma of packing for all weather situations within the limitations of a 40L backpack.

The weather was actually a very big consideration and it’s still up for debate if we got the clothing right or not. We both brought our puffy jackets, which took up considerable room and which we only used on perhaps 14 days out of 120. Perhaps more thin layers would have been better? Or just a puffy vest? On the other hand, I really hate being cold, and when we first arrived in March, Paris was below freezing at night.

I had actually tried bringing just a puffy vest and not a puffy jacket on my trip to Hawaii in February. You’re probably wondering why I would need anything warm for that particular trip, but before getting on the plane, I first I had to travel on public transportation from Riverside to Torrance, which consisted of a train, an hour-long wait outside LA Union Station (so many randos!), and then a bus. By the time I made it to my friend’s place after dark, my teeth were chattering from the cold. So that definitely influenced me to bring my puffy jacket, but I think in hindsight, I could have gotten away with just more layering and the puffy vest instead.

Here’s a silly selfie I took in our Airbnb in Brasov, Romania, where I layered up with my knitted cardigan, flannel, and windbreaker. I think that could have been something we did instead of bringing puffy jackets.

One of the best ways to measure whether or not I should have brought something on a trip is how often I used it. With that in mind, here are a few items I probably could have done without.

• P-style (used only once–I guess the bathroom situation in Europe usually isn’t anything to worry about)
• One of my dresses (I didn’t wear these as often as I thought so I could have probably left one at home, and/or maybe brought a skirt instead?)
• Journal (a much smaller notebook would have sufficed since I wasn’t very diligent about journaling)
• Puffy jacket (as mentioned above)

I also kept track of things that I purchased along the way and maybe should have just brought with me instead of having to deal with the stress of asking at pharmacies, searching everywhere, and not getting what I wanted anyway.

• Nail file (although a travel-sized foot file would have been better if such a thing exists)
• Chapstick (but then I found one that I packed as an extra, so I didn’t actually need to buy this 🤦‍♀️)
• Bacitracin (not sure what made me leave this at home since it’s such a small tube and could easily have fit!)
• Umcka (we kept getting sick and so any immune booster would have helped, although buying random complementary medicine stuff in Turkey, the Balkans, and London was kinda weird and fun)
• Tupperware (On the fence about this. We ended up buying some in Paris from an Ikea but were they necessary?)
• Silverware set/spork thing (We never bought anything like this, but we often commented that it would be nice)

Overall, that’s not a bad tally, and obviously we survived very well or bought what we needed along the way. I think the things I really wish I had brought are things that weren’t easily found in Europe and had a very specific purpose (like the Umcka for example). The chapstick was kind of a faff, especially because the first one I bought in Sevilla caused an allergic reaction, as did some lotion I bought in Brasov.

Buying more toiletries along the way seems like it would be an easy endeavor and is something lots of travel blogs advocate for packing light, but when you’re in a pharmacy staring at all the strange and foreign products (in a language you can’t read or understand), it’s not so easy. I sometimes ended up with stuff that didn’t work for me or felt and smelt weird. The big name brands that I was familiar with were the most expensive, too, so I usually ended up choosing something cheaper, but maybe this should be a lesson to me in the future. After all, it’s not feasible to bring enough toiletries to last 4 months, so I just need to be more discerning about what I buy and spend a few extra bucks for products I know will be fine with my apparently sensitive skin.

I was a little surprised by how much I used some of the things we brought. Doing yoga every day is something I always aspire to, but I hadn’t been sure I’d be able to accomplish it. I guess being unemployed has the benefit of more time for self-care, because I did yoga every day except for those travel days we had to wake up really early. The yoga mat was one of the most used items, in fact, and Craig often rolled it out for himself too. Here are some things I/we used a lot:

• Yoga mat
• Heating pad (wowee does this make me feel old, but it was soooo nice to have for sore muscles, and also when I had stomach problems or menstrual cramps)
• Crosswords (thanks Mom, for faithfully cutting them out of the newspaper for us while we were in Mexico and Chile!)
• S hooks (we found these at a Daiso and I brought them kind of on a whim because there are always a dearth of hooks when traveling, and actually they were so useful for hanging up makeshift curtains, to using in the cramped showers with no shelves, etc.)

The way I packed was always the same formula of cramming a bunch of stuff in one layer on the bottom of the pack, then cramming more in the middle, and then stuffing my small backpack on the top. Then I could easily take the small backpack out to have with me while the big pack would go on the bottom of buses or in the bins above on trains and planes. The backpack would have all the snacks and entertainment things that I would want for the journey. This worked really well for me because I like to have so many accoutrements for travel time.

You would think after all the travel Craig and I have done that packing would be a cinch and it wouldn’t stress me out so much, but then you would be wrong. But it, like most things in life, seems to be something one must learn as one goes and mistakes will always be made. I’m just glad the mistakes this time were fairly minor. Here’s hoping using this pack list as a template for future trips will also save on mistakes and stress!

I thought of making a video one day of packing the backpack, but in all the 26 times I packed it throughout Europe, I never once videoed the process.

Changes

It’s been two-and-a-half weeks since we returned to the U.S., and with all the family functions, meeting up with friends, and more long-distance buses, I’ve hardly had time to really process the fact that we’ve been back. Our plan of traveling up the west coast slowly has proven to be a good way to transition back to “real life”, but I’ve been so busy and tired that I haven’t really given our homecoming much thought.

Of course, there is the constant undercurrent of stress related to those mundane, little details like finding a job, finding a new apartment, and figuring out how to navigate the incredibly complicated world of cellphone plans… but for the most part, it sort of feels like we’re still on the road (because we are!).

When I do find the time for a little reflection, it’s difficult to answer the existential questions that started lurking in my mind as soon as we bought our return flights four months ago. Will I have changed? In a good or bad way? Will I be content to resume normal life, or will I be afflicted with the consuming wanderlust that seems to make chronic travelers unhappy with an everyday existence? Will I be one of those insufferable people who drone endlessly on about “Down in South America…”? Will the transition make me wish for an escape to the carefree times of the trip? Or will I settle down quite happily back in Seattle?

Early on in our journey, I remember saying to Craig, “I hope this doesn’t change me in ways I don’t want to be changed.” Why was I so worried? Well, I loved living in Seattle, I loved my job and coworkers, and I loved hanging out with my friends. I really didn’t want the trip to mess with my bubble of contentment. But since I loved Craig more than all of those things, away we went. And although the realities of coming back keep me awake some nights, I don’t regret my decision to go on this crazy adventure with Craig, and I don’t think I ever will despite any changes it might have wrought. Besides, I can’t really say that traveling for a year didn’t have its perks!

But will my fear come true? Will everyday existence pall in comparison to one year of constant travel?

I’m sure it will at times. It does for everybody, even without a year of South American memories to compare it to. But on the whole, it’s been good to be back. It’s been wonderful to see my brand-new niece, and get to know her older sister a bit better. Lovely to see so many family and friends, who have all genuinely supported us through the year. Their continued generosity and care only reinforce the belief that there’s really nothing that can compare to the people that love and care for you. It’s been good for me to heighten my appreciation for them.

As for work, I’m strangely very interested in returning as soon as I can. It might be something that I’ll regret later, but I’ve honestly thought a lot about work while I’ve been gone, and I’ve missed the beauty of nursing. There is a lot of ugly in it too, though, and it’s definitely possible that I’ve been remembering my work through rose-colored glasses. Still, I’ve been lazing around South America for one whole year and it’ll be good to feel productive again, I think.

And then there are the many other things I look forward to that only have to do with the prospect of not moving to a new place every few days, and not living out of a backpack. I imagine unpacking my clothes and feeling as if I’ve just been on a huge shopping spree with no cost. I’m remembering all my books, DVDs, and yarn. I can’t wait to be back in my ‘hood, and knowing my city so well that I can name which bus to take from point A to point B without looking it up in a guidebook or asking a tourist office. Calling up a friend to go have a drink in a local bar is no longer a pipe dream. And we’ll be speaking English! All the time! After feeling unmoored for a year, the thought of being settled and having a routine again is intoxicating.

There will be changes. I can’t promise myself an entirely smooth transition. The possibility of disappointment, disillusions, and reverse culture-shock is still very present. We haven’t even reached Seattle quite yet, and there might be a lot of unpleasant surprises waiting for us there. But I went through that entire year in South America with a (sometimes misguided) sense of fierce optimism, and I’m hoping it won’t desert me here. After all, there’s a lot to look forward to in the Wongenberg future!

Fooling around with Ainsley Pi, the winner of The Cutest Niece on the Planet award for 2015, with an honorable mention in the Cheeks category.

 

(Pretty much) The End

When we landed in LAX the symmetry of what we had just done didn’t quite hit me. It was a few hours later, after showering in our (comparatively) luxurious bathroom and getting into our plush bed, that I realized how almost one year to the day had passed since the last time we arrived here.

Places hold memories, and this bedroom is full of nervous nights – thinking about what to take with us and what to leave behind – trying to imagine what our life would be like for the proximate future. I relive those thoughts and can’t help but sigh in relief. We accomplished something and have the satisfaction of coming out on the other side unscathed.

But for me, the symmetry of us being here again is charged with anxiety over the legacy of our trip. There’s a saying (perhaps a little cliched now) that goes around the backpacker community: upon returning home from a trip, one finds that the only thing that changed during your absence was you. This can certainly be baffling, as sometimes the sheer length of time that you’ve been away demands that something has changed. And yet, your friends and loved ones continue their lives in the same way – your trip destined to be an awkward hole in your relationship with them.

The fear that we’ve somehow traveled 13,000+ miles only to end up in the exact same place, with very little physical evidence that we did much at all – that horrible symmetry – is really what greeted me during our first day here. But as quickly as it consumed me, it fled. I sighed with relief because this time around we aren’t leaving for a year-long trip. Instead, we will continue our glorious victory lap up the west coast – visiting people that we care about and sharing our stories. It’s with a certain satisfaction that I realize I’m not worrying about my future. I’m not stressing about the next step. My mind feels more clear. The most wonderful thing is that Sheena and I made it through this crazy thing and we’re going home together.

I guess I realized that I don’t want to focus on messy legacies. What we did was very real and tangible to Sheena and I – we can reach out and touch it. So while the near future is unknown to us, and we may look around at our cities and neighborhoods and realize that nothing much has changed, I feel comfortable with that. Travel is a funny thing – something maybe best served to play tricks on your mind – but I believe it to be a worthwhile endeavor. Thanks so much for following along during the last year. I hope you’ll miss reading as much as I’ll miss posting.

The state of our language skills

It means “gringo power” right? – Humahuaca, Argentina

When a Uruguayan tells you that you don’t sound like a gringo, you tend to get a little excited. But when he turns to his friends and says that truly, he can’t believe what he’s hearing, you might blush a little bit. That’s exactly what I did, and then proceeded to speak nervously the rest of the night, not wanting to pull away the tenuous facade that I had managed.

Foreign language fluency is a fickle thing. Some days you can’t miss – especially when you have the luxury of dealing with an accent that is familiar – and other days your mouth and tongue simply will not cooperate. There are certain questions and topics that we cover almost everyday, leaving some to assume much too quickly that we’re quite good at Spanish. I can tell you where I’ve been, and what our plan is for the remaining time with relative ease, but if we get onto a more complicated subject, the words are going to come a lot more slowly. To this day I never know if a person is asking me what city I just came from, or what my nationality is when they ask, “De donde vienes?” (it means both and frequently I guess wrong)

I guess I’m attempting to answer the question, “after this trip you must speak like a native, huh?” Sheena has certainly improved her language skills in a much more obvious way; she progressed from speaking very little to convincing me that she would never flounder on her own. But I’m not sure if mine have sharpened in any measurable way. It was never a goal of mine to “speak like a native,” but on good days it’s a nice feeling to convince someone I’m un che, if only for a few minutes.

Best of the trip

Expanding on the theme of things that we’ll miss about traveling in South America, here’s our list of some of the best places we visited.

BEST HOSTEL

This one is really difficult. I think the way I’m approaching this category is by awarding for overall quality. This means that the kitchen was awesome, that the rooms and bathrooms were super clean, the beds and pillows were comfortable, that the design of the hostel allowed for maximum social interaction and simultaneously minimum disturbance during sleeping hours (practically impossible), and that the staff were super nice and went way beyond the normal call of duty. For each one of those considerations there is a place that was a cut above the rest, with Palm Tree (Medellin), La Villana (Santa Marta), Sayta (Bogotá), Elefante Rosa (Buenos Aires), Running Chaski (Cochabamba), Arequipay Backpackers (Arequipa) and El Patagonico (Puerto Natales) coming to mind. But when we talk about true, overall excellence there is no better than Dolce Vita in Sucre, Bolivia.

Runner-up: Avalon in Vilcabamba, Ecuador (and a quick shout-out to Las Olas in Copacabana, Bolivia – even though it can’t be counted as a hostel it was probably the nicest place we stayed during the year)

BEST CITY

The biggest city we visited during our trip also turned out to be our favorite – the answer to this one was always Buenos Aires. The city offers so much that I can’t imagine anyone not finding their niche there. I love that place and can’t wait to go back.

Runners-up: I’m having a hard time narrowing down from Arequipa (Perú), Medellin (Colombia), Valparaíso (Chile) and Cuenca (Ecuador)…

BEST COUNTRY

A lot of people have already been asking us what our favorite place on the trip has been. Normally, this is the type of seemingly-easy-but-almost-always-too-difficult-to-answer questions that I kind of dread after a trip. But pleasantly The Wongenbergs agree 100% that Ecuador was the best place we visited. The country has it all, for incredible value, and is small enough to really pack in a lot of places in a short amount of time.

Runner-up: Colombia (probably, specifically, the mountainous center part)

BEST CENTRAL MARKET

One of the reasons that Arequipa is in consideration for best city is because of the San Camilo Market. We will never forget the rows of juice stands, the papas rellenas outside, the heaping piles of fresh fruit and vegetables, and the organized way the place is laid out.

Runner-up: Mercado 10 de Agosto, Cuenca, Ecuador

BEST MULTI-DAY HIKE

The Torres del Paine Full Circuit was one of the first things we did in South America. Yes it was way too crowded. And yes I was frustrated by certain things that came with that. But after 12 months we have yet to find the same kind of beauty that was on display mile after mile in that stunning location.

Runner-up: The Quilotoa Loop outside of Latacunga, Ecuador

BEST DAY HIKE

It was a very wet and foggy slog through some strange landscape, but what else should you expect when you do a day hike to a high altitude moor? The Páramo de Ocetá outside of Sogamoso, Colombia was an adventure and a great day out.

Runners-up: Valle de Cócora outside of Salento, Colombia

BEST ACTIVITY WE PAID FOR

Los Túneles Day Tour on Isabela Island, Galapagos

Runner-up: Renting a car in Salta, Argentina allowed us to see some pretty amazing landscapes and one incredible museum (James Turrell at Colomé)

BEST LOW COST/FREE ACTIVITY

La Lobería on the San Cristobal Island (Galapagos) was amazing. For $5 we rented snorkel equipment and spent several hours on the beach and in the water with sea turtles and sea lions. I went for a walk further up the coast and saw amazing bird life and many, many more turtles in the surf. A great day.

Runner-up: Baños bike ride to Pailón del Diablo

BEST DISH

Encebollado in Otavalo Market, Ecuador

Runner-up: Curanto in Achao, Chiloé (Chile)

BEST HOT SPRINGS

Llahuar in the Colca Canyon (Perú) was great for many reasons, but the thermal pool right on the river put it over the top. We loved this place and often recommend it to fellow travelers.

Runner-up: the Termales de Polques on day-two of our Uyuni Jeep Tour