I find it interesting that I do a fair bit of talking about what I’m doing now, but don’t often talk about my long-term goals or far-reaching dreams. It’s usually about the here and now — how’s the business going this month? what books did I read last week? what wedding did I visit last weekend? — but I don’t really mention things that are happening (besides weddings that I’m excited about) in the near or far future.
So I thought I’d take a minute to write about traveling.
Back when I was a kid, my family and I would take an intercontinental trip every summer to visit family in Japan. I knew, even then, that that was not something that every family did. Because fares would cost less if we left before the official start of summer vacation, I usually skipped the last few days of school for our flight, and we’d stay in Japan for two months. My life was basically school from September to late May in America, then school from May to July in Japan, and then a month’s recuperation and resetting after jetlag during August; rinse and repeat. But we stopped doing that sometime in our high school years, as finals took more precedence, and my sister and I quit learning Japanese.
Since then, I haven’t really made time to really travel. I’m now coming up on my 10-year high school reunion and I’m getting closer to 30, and I’m realizing that the last long vacation I’ve taken was in 2006, to Europe (and though that was an amazing experience, it was also mostly a school trip) and Hawaii that winter. And that just makes me sad. Now that we’re older and we’re paying our own bills, it seems difficult to find the money — money, that could be better used for rent, or car maintenance, or just plain saving — to pay for travel. But I’ve been feeling the itch more and more lately that I’ve been in one place for too long.
Until a month ago, Walt didn’t even have a passport. Luckily, we had a good excuse to get him one.
In May, we’ll be visiting Puerto Vallarta for a long weekend as we celebrate my sister’s wedding. I’m super excited about this because I’ve never been to Mexico before (as well as the fact that my only sister is getting married)! We finalized our plans today, having purchased our airline tickets last month and our all-inclusive resort reservations today.
But even before that, I’ll be heading to a photography conference in Vancouver in April! I impulsively bought a seat for the conference last fall, and after some wishy-washy feelings on my part where I thought about dumping it, I finally committed to it fully by booking my flights this week. I’m excited about Vancouver in the spring!
And because we’re way overdue for a trip to see family in Japan, I’m going to try to persuade my sister to coordinate with me so we can take our husbands with us sometime in 2014! I’ll wait to pester her until after her wedding, though :)
Where do you want to travel? Or where have you recently traveled? Got any ideas where I should put on my dream destination list?
Photo of Puerto Vallarta from Wikimedia (public domain)
