Reminiscing....

It struck me today that I've been gone from home for a while now. So I began to think back what I was doing in the recent past:

1 week ago, I was having a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner with my fellow cruisers on the Nile, heading toward Aswan. (This was my first major holiday outside the US.)

1 month ago, I was touring Auschwitz in Southern Poland.

2 months ago, I had just finished going to the Arctic Circle the day before and just found out that my original cell phone wasn't working. Hard to believe it was almost two months ago that I left Helsinki. I remember it as relatively warm, but saw on the weather that it is freezing now along with the rest of the countries I visited before Turkey.

3 months ago, I had just come back to Copenhagen from Soroe and was about to head off on my first train trip on my own to Helsingoer. Sweden, Norway, and Finland seemed exotic, distant, and a little initimidating back then.

4 months ago, almost every aspect of my life was in complete upheaval as I tried to finish packing, planning, preparing, moving my stuff into storage, and leave my work in a stable state so I could travel.

5 months ago, Elisa had just left for Yakima the week before, I was completely swamped with work and exhausted from moving to a new apartment. It was starting to dawn on me that there was no way I could get things prepared to leave as planned by July 14.

6 months ago, I had decided just 9 days before to travel to Europe (Thanks, Michelle, Luong, Troy, & Elisa for convincing me to do so!) and was busy making plans and preparations.