My mom's been asking me when I would write a final post for my blog for a while now, and a few weeks ago I replied, "I'll finish my blog when there are 25 hours in the day." A few days later, it was day lights savings - a literal 25 hour day. So I decided to never use that saying again and get the ball rolling and actually do this. It's been over three months since I've been back in the States, but I'm still looking back and learning things from my trip.
When I got back to the States, I got back into the swing of things (eating cereal while standing up in the kitchen, hating my phone) so quickly that it almost felt like I had never left. But after being back in Austin for a few weeks, I found myself feeling anxious and over-saturated with people, and had to just take some alone time. Being with people felt like a kind of addiction, or like eating too much sugar: I'd be sick if I had any more, but felt uneasy when I was by myself. Before I left, I had been eager to embrace my loneliness and turn into "fruitful solitude," and had definitely found it to some extent while on the road, but went right back to a "tiring and anxious clinging" to relationships with people (those quotes are from Henri Nouwen).
Honestly, once I realized it, I wanted to just leave. Leave Texas, leave America, go to Berlin, climb in Thailand - I just wanted to be alone. I realized that being with people is hard and that being alone is easy. It's not better, just easier. Friendships are hard and they're worth it, but I get why it's so easy for people to isolate themselves. God didn't make us to be isolated, and like all good things, relationships are hard, but worth it. So all that is one of the bigger things I've learned since being back, and I'm still picking up on smaller things.
I kept a journal on my trip and wrote in it just about every day. I've enjoyed reading through my notes, looking at the thousands of pictures I took, and thinking what it would be like to revisit or live in those places. When I was in Spain, I made a list of every city I had been through, rated them on a scale of 1 to 9 of how badly I would like to live there, with 2 being College Station, 4 being Houston, 6 being Dallas, and 8 being Austin. However, when I made the list, I was eager to get back to Texas and I've since realized that I'm more ready to get out of Dallas and Austin, so I've gone back through and decided to skew the rating scale by changing Dallas to a 5 and Austin to a 7. Here's a link to the google doc with the table!
City Rankings Table
There are plenty of cities on that table that I would rather live in than where I live now, Austin, and many more for where the oil industry will probably take me, Houston. I constantly find myself thinking of ways to end up in those cities, and it doesn't look like oil will take me there. I could graduate, get a job in Houston, then go ahead and buy that satellite dish, cause I could be there the rest of my life. That doesn't seem appealing to me after going to these places and meeting these people with such eccentric and adventure-filled lifestyles. Like the Israeli I met in Thailand who worked 6 months and traveled for 6 months every year! Like the Australians who work at wineries or mines for 4 months and use that money to travel until the next year! But those lifestyles are so contrary to what seems comfortable and secure and it seems so far away from where I'm headed by being in grad school.
A few weeks ago I talked to a friend who was considering going to Peru for 6 weeks, then lied awake in my bed looking on Google Earth at countries I wanted to visit. A few days ago, I saw a friend who just moved to Seattle with no job or friends in the area, and talking to her made me want to pack my bags and just go somewhere and just be a barista or something. I frequently think about what I would do if I had a year off. I would take small trips of 2-4 months and come back to Texas to get refreshed, then go again. I have a few ideas of what to do too: bike from Texas to Seattle, go to South America, hike the Appalachian Trail, be a climbing bum in Colorado/Utah/Wyoming, travel around Israel/Middle East, work at a hostel in Germany and learn German, or even go back to Nepal and try to appreciate the culture a bit better.
I could think all day about what I want to do, but all that just makes me more thankful for what I got to do. I'm so very thankful that my uncle encouraged me to travel, that my family supported me, that I never had any serious problems, that I got to even see those places, and that I got to see God in awesome ways along the trip. I think back to the small ways I saw God - seeing the family praying over their son at LAX; my time and conversation with the Reeds in Singapore; overhearing a woman reading the Faith of the Centurion in Nepal. It brings me a lot of joy to think of those times and I praise God for them.
I also said I would do a second part of the Best Of list, so here it is! I only listed the important stats and the ones that changed:
Total flight time: 63 hours
Total intercity bus/boat/train time (rough estimate): 220 hours
Pancakes (REAL pancakes, not crepes): 14 (6 from McDonalds, 2 in Boston)
Books: 12 (Hyperion Cantos 1-3, Weavers of Saramyr, Chronicles of Narnia 1-6, A Clockwork Orange, and Cat's Cradle)
Country with best food: Malaysia
Country with worst food: New Zealand
Best coffee shop: Vudu Cafe in Queenstown, NZ
Best meal: pancakes, eggs florentine, eggs benedict, and bottomless coffee at Mike's Restaurant, Pokhara, Nepal
Best beer: Weihenstephan from Munich, Germany
Best hosts: The Reeds and Abby in Singapore
Best weather: Raposeira, Portugal
Most annoying voice: Thai women
Dirtiest city: Kathmandu, Nepal
Country I wish I had visited: Israel or Turkey or Iceland or Norway
Worst hair style: mullet-dreads (typical of Spaniards)
Cutest girls: Spain
Biggest bro culture: New Zealand, hands down
Don't forget my beard growing video
So that's about it. It was a trip of a lifetime and has changed the way I see places and people in more ways than I can think of. I'm glad I kept this blog because it has helped to solidify memories in my mind and it was fun to share everything that happened. Thank you all for keeping up with my blog when I was overseas and for the thoughts and prayers! Be praying that I get to do it again!
When I got back to the States, I got back into the swing of things (eating cereal while standing up in the kitchen, hating my phone) so quickly that it almost felt like I had never left. But after being back in Austin for a few weeks, I found myself feeling anxious and over-saturated with people, and had to just take some alone time. Being with people felt like a kind of addiction, or like eating too much sugar: I'd be sick if I had any more, but felt uneasy when I was by myself. Before I left, I had been eager to embrace my loneliness and turn into "fruitful solitude," and had definitely found it to some extent while on the road, but went right back to a "tiring and anxious clinging" to relationships with people (those quotes are from Henri Nouwen).
Honestly, once I realized it, I wanted to just leave. Leave Texas, leave America, go to Berlin, climb in Thailand - I just wanted to be alone. I realized that being with people is hard and that being alone is easy. It's not better, just easier. Friendships are hard and they're worth it, but I get why it's so easy for people to isolate themselves. God didn't make us to be isolated, and like all good things, relationships are hard, but worth it. So all that is one of the bigger things I've learned since being back, and I'm still picking up on smaller things.
I kept a journal on my trip and wrote in it just about every day. I've enjoyed reading through my notes, looking at the thousands of pictures I took, and thinking what it would be like to revisit or live in those places. When I was in Spain, I made a list of every city I had been through, rated them on a scale of 1 to 9 of how badly I would like to live there, with 2 being College Station, 4 being Houston, 6 being Dallas, and 8 being Austin. However, when I made the list, I was eager to get back to Texas and I've since realized that I'm more ready to get out of Dallas and Austin, so I've gone back through and decided to skew the rating scale by changing Dallas to a 5 and Austin to a 7. Here's a link to the google doc with the table!
City Rankings Table
There are plenty of cities on that table that I would rather live in than where I live now, Austin, and many more for where the oil industry will probably take me, Houston. I constantly find myself thinking of ways to end up in those cities, and it doesn't look like oil will take me there. I could graduate, get a job in Houston, then go ahead and buy that satellite dish, cause I could be there the rest of my life. That doesn't seem appealing to me after going to these places and meeting these people with such eccentric and adventure-filled lifestyles. Like the Israeli I met in Thailand who worked 6 months and traveled for 6 months every year! Like the Australians who work at wineries or mines for 4 months and use that money to travel until the next year! But those lifestyles are so contrary to what seems comfortable and secure and it seems so far away from where I'm headed by being in grad school.
A few weeks ago I talked to a friend who was considering going to Peru for 6 weeks, then lied awake in my bed looking on Google Earth at countries I wanted to visit. A few days ago, I saw a friend who just moved to Seattle with no job or friends in the area, and talking to her made me want to pack my bags and just go somewhere and just be a barista or something. I frequently think about what I would do if I had a year off. I would take small trips of 2-4 months and come back to Texas to get refreshed, then go again. I have a few ideas of what to do too: bike from Texas to Seattle, go to South America, hike the Appalachian Trail, be a climbing bum in Colorado/Utah/Wyoming, travel around Israel/Middle East, work at a hostel in Germany and learn German, or even go back to Nepal and try to appreciate the culture a bit better.
I could think all day about what I want to do, but all that just makes me more thankful for what I got to do. I'm so very thankful that my uncle encouraged me to travel, that my family supported me, that I never had any serious problems, that I got to even see those places, and that I got to see God in awesome ways along the trip. I think back to the small ways I saw God - seeing the family praying over their son at LAX; my time and conversation with the Reeds in Singapore; overhearing a woman reading the Faith of the Centurion in Nepal. It brings me a lot of joy to think of those times and I praise God for them.
Day 1 in Nadi, Fiji
Sunset that night
At an island beach in Fiji
Public transport to downtown Auckland, New Zealand
Geothermal lake in Rotorua, NZ
Chili and cornbread in Rotorua, NZ
Poker in Rotorua, NZ. The guy in the red is Jerry, who I stayed with in Germany 3 months later
Dustin at the Tongariro Alpine Crossing
Able Tasman National Park, NZ
Pancake rocks, NZ
At the Fox Glacier, NZ
Looking from the glacier into the valley
Hanging at the beach in Queenstown, NZ
Street musicians in Queenstown
Fergburger with DP in Queenstown, NZ
Ebenezer at the Routeburn Track in NZ
Where I found all those rocks
Family on a train in Singapore. The little girl kept laughing and saying, "Daddy doesn't have a seat!"
Some guy I hung out with in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Reiko and I at Batu Caves in KL, Malaysia
Graffiti in KL
Durian that I ate in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
Trying to make the most of the town of Melecca, Malaysia with Spainiard, Austrian, and Romanian friends
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
Sidecar on a motorcycle in Krabi City, Thailand
Deep water soloing in Thailand
Every day hang out spot in Tonsai, Thailand
Climbing guide givin a hook em
I ate here at least twice a day, every day while in Tonsai
Found a DQ in Bangkok and had to take this picture
Odd building somewhere in Nepal
Little boy and puppy on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal
Rainy day at Annapurna Circuit
Shaggy dog in Chame, Nepal
2 tables full of Israelis at a bed/breakfast in Nepal
Cool weathered rock in Nepal
More cool rocks
Tibetan writing on stone slabs
On the way to Tharong La pass in Nepal
cool rock formations near Jomson, Nepal
Rainy streets in Kathmandu, Nepal
Jerry and friends in Bamberg, Germany
Jerry's parents who put me on for 3 days!
Feri Hajos gave me a bike tour of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Loved street art in Slovenia
110% toaster
Sunset over church in Piran, Solvenia
Peninsula of Piran
Cool bridge in Budapest, Hungary
Part of one of my favorite sculptures in Budapest
Statues and stone in Budapest
Don't know what this is, but it was in Vienna, Austria
Skateboarder getting kicked out of the area in Vienna
Remote control digger looks like fun
Sunset over Berlin, Germany
Beautiful art on Berlin wall
More art on Berlin wall
Almost couldn't get arm space at the Louvre in Paris, France
Hourly sparkles at the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Uncle Ray getting his honorary Doctorate in Louvaine La Nouve, Belgium
River surfing in Munich, Germany
Lauren and Elena catching a train in Munich
Lauren, Casey, Elena, and myself in Florence, Italy
Fun poses in Pisa, Italy
Sunset over Florence, Italy
This doesn't make me want to honor the "This is a holy site - please be quiet" signs
Weird statue at the Vatican Museum in Rome, Italy
Throwing coins in the fountain in Rome
Train tracks on the coast at Cinque Terre, Italy
Old traveler in Bolzano/Bozen Italy
Beard hair gets split ends too... really, really bad split ends...
Cathedral in Barcelona with beautiful stained glass
Don't remember where this was, but somewhere in Spain
At the Alhambra in Granada, Spain
Cool solar power tower on the way to Portugal
At the airport in Boston, USA
On the MIT campus
Back home with my favorite beer and favorite family!
I also said I would do a second part of the Best Of list, so here it is! I only listed the important stats and the ones that changed:
Total flight time: 63 hours
Total intercity bus/boat/train time (rough estimate): 220 hours
Pancakes (REAL pancakes, not crepes): 14 (6 from McDonalds, 2 in Boston)
Books: 12 (Hyperion Cantos 1-3, Weavers of Saramyr, Chronicles of Narnia 1-6, A Clockwork Orange, and Cat's Cradle)
Country with best food: Malaysia
Country with worst food: New Zealand
Best coffee shop: Vudu Cafe in Queenstown, NZ
Best meal: pancakes, eggs florentine, eggs benedict, and bottomless coffee at Mike's Restaurant, Pokhara, Nepal
Best beer: Weihenstephan from Munich, Germany
Best hosts: The Reeds and Abby in Singapore
Best weather: Raposeira, Portugal
Most annoying voice: Thai women
Dirtiest city: Kathmandu, Nepal
Country I wish I had visited: Israel or Turkey or Iceland or Norway
Worst hair style: mullet-dreads (typical of Spaniards)
Cutest girls: Spain
Biggest bro culture: New Zealand, hands down
Don't forget my beard growing video
So that's about it. It was a trip of a lifetime and has changed the way I see places and people in more ways than I can think of. I'm glad I kept this blog because it has helped to solidify memories in my mind and it was fun to share everything that happened. Thank you all for keeping up with my blog when I was overseas and for the thoughts and prayers! Be praying that I get to do it again!
