Goodbye 2011! Hello 2012!

This year marked a lot of changes in my life. I took the ACT (that was… interesting). I got to basically mother a three year old for three days (now I want kids). I learned about a really cool sleep schedule that I WILL be implementing once we get back home (with Mom!). I got a tan. A really cool tan. (Which, naturally, will be lost by the time we get back home… so I can't show anyone my awesome tan.)

I got dragged on this crazy, insane, ridiculously fun/annoying trip that is turning my life absolutely upside down.

Seriously. Because of this trip— but I'll stop there. It's nothing I can't say later… once I've actually figured out how THE PLAN changes. (There are a lot of plans.)

We came up with this idea… two years ago? Three? Mom and Dad were expecting to have to take it when they retired. And then, suddenly, they realized they could take us too. (Ileana may or may not have helped.)

At the beginning… I didn't want to go at all. It would have upset the aforementioned plan. I was going to go to college, learn to be a doctor or a teacher (or something else?), learn, have fun, get married, have kids (as Mr. Clark says… I'm like a mother hen). Now, with this entire trip, suddenly, instead of taking the ACT/SAT, getting into Yale (or one of those colleges), or possibly even Romania for med school, and then everything… suddenly I lose a year of college— all my friends will have passed freshman year, while I'll just be entering. Not to mention that I might be studying medicine in Romania, which would mean seeing my friends even less.

But, as departure day approached, I found myself getting a bit more interesting. Sure, it was a bit annoying having to tell people and having to smile and say, "Yes, we're very lucky…"

We didn't feel lucky. We didn't. It meant leaving our house, our friends, our enemies (some people I never thought I'd miss), our church… our routine— there's no routine any more.

But I have to admit… it's great going out, seeing new people, seeing new places… getting a new house every two weeks, learning a new bit of a new language (we've learned five new 'thank you's), being able to say, "Oh, I went to the Taj Mahal for my birthday… it was pretty special."

And guess what? We have another 13 months of this! Can you imagine that?

During 2012, we'll be visiting China again (Hong Kong, Macao), Thailand, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand… all sorts of places, with new experiences, new spicy foods (I tell you, there are more spicy foods than not in this world), new funny stories….

Happy New Year!

ALSO: This is the 101st post on the blog! Can you believe we've hit so many?