It’s been over eight months since we started traveling, and things have not gone exactly as we imagined they would.

We’ve explored Middle Earth, swam with sea turtles in the Great Barrier Reef, walked two hours home at 5:00 AM through the quiet streets of Kyoto while the sun rose over the city, visited King’s Landing, caught up with old friends, made new ones, eaten a ton of good food…

Fled one Couchsurfing host in the middle of the night for the sanctuary of another (I’ll get into that in a later post. It was nothing life threatening, but it did result in some not-so-fun talks with the local police the next morning)…

We’ve missed out on a lot of important things back home. Friends getting married, cousins or nieces growing up. Loved ones leaving us.

I don’t remember reading a single blog post in all my years of preparation for this trip that dealt with the turmoil that hometown tragedy stirs up within your psyche. That’s definitely something else I want to delve into deeper in a future post, when I have more time (I’m writing this post on a whim, late at night, before a possible impromptu jaunt around central/eastern Europe, and we haven’t even packed or planned or anything). For now, I’ll just say one thing: there have been times where I have seriously had to pull myself back from the edge of hopping online and booking the next flight back home.

I don’t mean to sound melancholy or regretful. Jeff and I both realize how lucky we are to be doing what we’re doing, and are constantly in wonder at where our lives have taken us, and will be taking us. We are having an AMAZING time. So amazing that I hardly have time to update this blog, or post photos to our Facebook page. (Self-promotion alert! Speaking of photos, I HAVE uploaded my favorite shots to RedBubble.)

But there are so many things I want to write about. So many stories, lots of reflection, maybe some tips and (GASP) light advice.

I look back at the time when I believed I was going to “monetize” this blog and make a living off of it, and laugh, and laugh.

I look forward to the places Jeff and I are going and pinch myself: Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Krakow, Biecz (a small town outside of Krakow where my great-grandmother was born nearly 100 years ago); Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, Ireland.

I miss my friends and family, the world over.

I remember the motto we chose for this site when we started it over a year ago, and try to take the world, one day at a time.