I started jotting down the thoughts that make up this post a couple of months ago, while we were still traveling. We’ve been home for just over two weeks now, so I’m sure these reflections will continue to evolve. But for now, here are all the things we’ve been talking about and thinking about.

Why do we travel?

There are many different points of view on the best ways to travel. Some people are diehard “slow travelers” and feel that you can’t really know a place unless you are there for an extended amount of time and living among the locals. For many tourists, it seemed that they visited a place purely so they could create content for their social media feeds. I don’t have judgements either way, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about why we were traveling and if we were going about it the “right” way.

Regular readers of the blog know our travel style. We moved quickly and visited many of the touristy sites in each place. My attitude is that people visit them for a reason, so being “touristy” is not inherently a negative thing. We ate local foods and had as many conversations with locals as we could, but we didn’t ever fully integrate. I’m not convinced that visitors ever truly can.

On most days, we put one foot in front of the other and didn’t think much about what we were doing. But on some days, especially the difficult ones, we found ourselves asking why we were doing this. What was our purpose? What were we trying to prove? In the end, for me, it comes down to the not-very-satisfying answer of: because we could. If we had the means, the time, the health, and the energy to see the world; why wouldn’t we try? Nick and I are the type of people who will always choose to go to a new restaurant over an old standby, and the same was true for this year. I would always rather try something and decide it’s not for me than to never try anything at all.

Day-to-day the biggest thing I got out of it was being able to be present enough to observe my thoughts, my family, and the world around me. If we hadn’t moved as quickly as we did, we would have had fewer opportunities to observe and then compare places. I love the act of noticing things, without judgement, and then learning why they are how they are.

My recipe for a good life

I have a working theory that a good life is made up of routine punctuated by excitement. You need both ingredients, or at least I do.

Our previous ~8 years were mostly the former. We had predictable weekdays where we went to work and school, and rotated through the same seasonal weekend activities (playdates, errands, meal prep, swimming, etc.). Life was good and we wanted for nothing, but it felt stagnant. We could have lived like this forever, and—excluding unpredictable acts of god—not much would have changed. I was being challenged and stretched by work and parenting, but nothing felt all that exciting. I was rarely surprised, for better or worse.

This trip swung us to the other side of the spectrum, and we suddenly had a firehose of novelty. Every day brought new experiences, new people, new foods. At first this was incredible, but then it started to wear us down. I feel like an ungrateful and miserable person sharing this, but I’ll write it anyway: when every day is special, nothing really feels special. This especially hit us on the second half of the trip. I remember we had this conversation after visiting the subterranean cave in Palawan. If we had lived this exact day after 6 months of our previous life at home, it would have been one of the best days of my life. But after recently visiting other world renowned caves, after eating incredible food in Thailand, and after spending weeks snorkeling in the most perfect water… we couldn’t help but compare it, and it fell short. I know how disgusting I sound, and we felt it in the moment too. We spent a lot of time feeling guilty for not being awed by what we were seeing, and worrying if we had overdosed on novelty.

The times on the trip that felt the best were when we had a jolt of change. For example, getting to Australia after months in Asia made me appreciate the ability to make small talk with strangers. Visiting Vietnam after being in Japan and Korea made me especially aware of its affordability. One place isn’t necessarily better than another, but being able to see the contrast between them led to little enlightenments for me. It’s like how food tastes better after a big workout, or how a day off feels better after working really, really hard. The joy of life is in the contrast.

America the beautiful complicated but pretty good

When we left for the trip, we were pretty down on the state of America and seriously considering moving elsewhere. The news cycle here is nearly impossible to escape, and feels especially bad when the current administration has different values than you, as is the case for us now. We knew that we wanted to put on earmuffs and not worry about politics while we were away, which I recognize is a huge privilege. At first this was easy, but then a strange thing happened: it started to feel like the news was following us. Donald Trump visited Gyeongju Korea the day we left, a war broke out between Thailand and Cambodia right as we were crossing between the two countries, and the Andes strain of Hanta virus was found to have spread person-to-person while we were in the Andes. I started to realize that while the news is unavoidable, it was affecting us because we were centering ourselves in it and letting it bring us down. Moving forward, I want to stay informed and involved, but I know we will live a better life if we don’t let it affect us so much.

I started the trip feeling embarrassed sharing that we were Americans. As time progressed, I noticed that no one was as down on America as we were. Most people were neutral, and plenty of others were excited to hear about the US and wished they could visit, let alone live and work there. As the trip progressed, we found ourselves slowly shifting from being critical of our home country to remembering all the things we loved about it. Every time we visited a new city or natural phenomenon I found myself comparing it to something back home: “these mountains feel like Colorado” “this beach town feels like Florida” “this desert feels like West Texas” and so on. No other country comes close to the natural beauty and geographical diversity of the US.

There is also just something to be said for familiarity. Do we have a convoluted healthcare system? Yes. Is public transport in most cities trash? Also yes. We have broken systems, but they’re my broken systems, and at least I know how to navigate them. I came home with a new gratitude for all the things America does do right: the absurd variety at the grocery store, the friendly small talk, the ice, the air conditioning, and so on.

Parenting bootcamp

The best and most challenging part of our whole trip is how much time we got to spend with Millie. The hardest moments on our trip weren’t when we were sick, or hitting travel snafus, or missing home—they were when we were trying to decode her behavior while coming up with a plan for it right in front of her.

Before this trip we were involved parents, but we shared the childrearing with her teachers (we appreciate you Elizabeth!), my parents, and our friends. And we got breaks. We had downtime after she went to bed on a predictable schedule, and we got occasional date nights. This year, we were together 24/7.

It was hard, but it was more rewarding than anything else. We started noticing so many little details of how her brain works, how she reacts to things, and how it was all evolving. We could predict her patterns. All three of us were so locked in with each other and we feel like we know her so deeply now. We’ve also been forced to analyze the same things for ourselves: how our brains work, how we react to things, and how we probably should change. We had a few very late nights of talking (sometimes arguing) through where we were falling short or needed new approaches. These were painful but we are so much more confident as her parents after this year.

Final thoughts

We expected to end this experience with some sort of breakthrough or drastic change to our life, but we haven’t. At first this felt like a failure, like we hadn’t completed the mission we set out for ourselves. But the more we talk it through, the more we realize: maybe that’s because we were on the right track all along. We’re back in our same house, Millie’s going back to her same school, we have our same friends, and we’re looking for similar jobs. The only thing that has changed is how much we appreciate what we already had.

Deep down, I do think we have changed in one significant way. Nick said it casually and I wrote it down in my notes app because it felt profound. He said “life feels like less of a big deal now”. The hardest part of this whole experience was actually doing it and sticking with it. We were worried that we’d come back discombobulated and lost, but that hasn’t happened. Instead, we’re back with the confidence that we can have big ambitions, take scary leaps, and then figure things out together. This confidence is something we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives.

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Addendum: a random list of observations

I was surprised by the things that were easy to find. Good Wi-Fi was abundant. Of the 392 posts I wrote, I think I only had to use phone service for about 3 of them. Uzbekistan gave us the most trouble when it came to phone service, I think because we were bumping up against Russian-owned providers and firewalls. I dreaded the “great firewall” of China, but it ended up being completely manageable.

It seems that everyone in the world has a smart phone. When Nick and I traveled in the 2010s this wasn’t the case, and we spent a lot of energy keeping our phone safe because we were outliers. Now that the technology and access gap has closed, we didn’t feel the need to keep our phones locked away. Everyone, everywhere is addicted to their screens.

Millie ate pizza in every country, and most of the time it was surprisingly good. Almost everywhere we went had pizza as an offering. In Cambodia, where food was spicy, I asked someone what kids ate, and the answer was pizza. If we couldn’t find pizza, we could usually find spaghetti bolognese.

We were able to get simple prescriptions in a few different countries and it was so easy, and so cheap. We visited pharmacies or doctors in Germany, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Japan, and New Zealand.

The only thing that surprised me in the opposite direction was how few places had drinkable tap water. Outside of Western Europe and Australia, we drank so much bottled water. We probably have 3 spoons’ worth of microplastics in our brains now instead of the standard 1. I was surprised that China, which in many ways is the most technologically advanced place I have ever been, did not have potable water. I was equally surprised that the Atacama desert in Chile, which is literally the driest place on earth, had perfectly clean tap water.

Everywhere was pretty kid friendly (except airports), but there are a few things that stand out in my memory as being extra special. The bathrooms in Korea and Japan are elite. They always had little kid toilets and sinks, and usually had big shared family bathrooms. Restaurants in South Africa go above and beyond with activities for kids, like bringing them back to the kitchen to cook, providing full activity sets for the table, and so on. Australia had the best playgrounds.

This blog was one of the biggest gifts I’ve ever given myself. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt like Carrie Bradshaw, which is saying a lot because I spent my 20s in NYC. I can’t believe I actually stuck with it, but I’m so glad I did. I’ve already started reading old posts wistfully, and I can’t wait for Millie to read them and see what she remembers or not. Nick stopped reading it early on because he said it was coloring how he was experiencing our time, so I’m excited for him to read it too. My biggest lessons were how much I enjoy writing, and how much the daily practice of doing something can take the pressure off.

How did we ever travel without the internet? It boggles my mind that Nick and I traveled through West Africa and Mexico before we had smartphones. I remember driving across the US in 2007 and running into roadside motels to ask if they had rooms available. Now I book everything ahead of time on my phone and read a million reviews before spending a dime. In so many ways it makes travel easier, but it also removes what I used to love about it: the challenge of finding things and the victory when you do, as well as the surprises (good and bad) along the way.