Happy/Sad

What a year it’s been!  We’re happy to be coming home but sad that our adventure is behind us.

It truly has been a grand adventure.

The things we’ve seen.  

The places we’ve been.  

Most of all, the things we’ve learned.

We’ve learned how little we need to make it through a whole year.

We’ve learned to try new things and discover we actually like them.

In Italy, we fell in love again, and completely, with the small town of Pienza.  We made friends we will remember our whole lives, even though we were there barely two months.  It became the town of our hearts.  Now we are a part of it as well.  We plan on returning as often as we can.  

We learned how to downsize.  

We leaned that fewer possessions and richer experiences can go hand-in-hand.

We learned the value of tradition, and how a people can cherish what their ancestors did.  

What may seem simply an odd custom to an outsider defines who these people are, and gives them a sense of place no American can possess because our history is too short. 

In Australia, we traversed the Great Ocean Road.  We saw a small part of a country the size of the USA with fewer people than  California.  We saw the opposite of what we experienced in Italy…what a country can build when unencumbered by thousands of years of tradition.

We came to understand why Abel Tasman, the first European to set eyes on New Zealand, thought he had stumbled upon the Garden of Eden.  

We met a people who are more concerned with preserving the breath-taking beauty of what they have than in producing and acquiring more.  

We had seen photos and even films of New Zealand but were not prepared for the reality of it.  There are portions of the South Island we can only describe as magical.

On the North Island, we saw that some of the most beautiful spots on earth aren’t on earth at all, but are under the sea.  And, we learned to relax.

We returned to Italy in the Spring and explored parts of the country we had never seen before...Rome… and the south.

We found Greek cities as old as anything in Greece.  

We found whole Italian provinces that after three thousand years still thought they were Greek.

We can’t remember all the people who opened their hearts to us.  Yes, they gave us directions and advice on what to see and do, but they also taught us that everywhere in the world it’s easy to find people willing to go out of their way to share a part of their lives with complete strangers.

We returned home a bit poorer in the pocketbook but much, much richer in experience.  

We’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

(…though we might plan a bit differently next time)