Eat, Play, Pack
After seven months of travel, we came back for a stopover in the US to see family and friends, and to recharge.
It was hard to imagine we were this far into the trip. All through the flight back (when awake) we kept saying to each other — I can’t believe we are going home. Perhaps appropriately, this flight home from Singapore was also our longest hop yet, with a disorienting middle-of-the-night layover in Hong Kong…
For some undoubtedly nefarious and antidemocratic reason, all benches in the Hong Kong terminal have armrests no more than 3.5 feet apart so that it actually impossible to lie down normally
Even in the airport at SFO, taxiing to the gate, I thought — where are we? It can’t be California. It just doesn’t make sense. But, no misreading this —
Home sweet home!
Walking around San Francisco the next few days — much like we do in the places we go to — was a damn welcome sight. Pangs of homesickness and its relief alternated. Everything seemed familiar and out of a dream at the same time
My first visit to a cafe, however, threw some cold water on my excitement at being home. While serving a very mediocre cappuccino for $5, the barista laid on a thick layer of that San Francisco-style polite snobbery that’s been entirely absent from our recent experience.
Asia and Europe servers can be snobby too but it somehow seems less fake, and in general interactions are somehow more real and a lot less polished. Oddly enough, I used to appreciate — even crave — that SF attitude. Not so anymore. When we come back after our year away, will we be able to adjust back to the Bay Area and its style of interaction? Or did the world at large spoil it for us… or spoilt us for it? It’s hard to know just yet, as we are not really back. As we’ve said to ourselves, we are just stopping by.
One thing has stayed the same, however — the sunsets never fail to impress or touch our hearts
SF backyard glory
Enjoying home
While home, we took advantage of Masha’s parents backyard and did fun science experiments — like what happens when you drop a bunch of Mentos into a coke bottle —
And, in Atlanta, we held a photo contest. Unexpectedly, I won! And was promptly sent to the stockade (aka Alya’s makeshift winner banner platform)
We also had surprisingly delicious Khao Soi in SF, rivaling any in Chiang Mai
And while some things seemed foreign and jarring, others were unmistakably home: spending time with family,
playing badminton in the yard and escaping from rooms in Atlanta,
gorging on all the home-made foods that we missed over seven months,
and hanging out with our friends as if we never left — we went to birthdays and bbqs, had game nights, and made sushi together
We discovered that in our absence, some our friends became even more Super
We reconnected with our canine family members
And met a new one — Echo
Everyone asked how we had changed through our travel and how our travels changed us. Surprisingly little it turns out —- at least in our current ability to assess such things. It was remarkably easy to fall back into our regular life — all the anchor points were still there. The biggest development was probably just finding out how we handle long travel and change, and what we most appreciate about home — not insignificant! Masha also thinks that being away from a regular rhythm of life and traveling freed us to actually be more ourselves… so rather than changing us, it allowed all parts of us that are innate to become stronger.
And, interestingly enough, we were able to view our usual haunts through different eyes. Used to seeing every place we arrive to as new and “to be discovered”, we tried to view SF the same way as well. For example — just like in Turkey, Uzbekistan and Singapore, we inadvertently encountered a celebration on our visit. This time, SF was ablaze with Chinese New Year celebration
Vadim and I waited until the parade started in the evening, and the wait paid off. Although there were more schools parading than actual lion dances, making for a very long procession, when they finally got to us it was pretty cool. Walking around Chinatown in the evening was a surreal experience, with fireworks and firecrackers going off all around, people running in all directions. The chaos of it all rivaled even the Chiang Mai New Year.
Having gotten used to being home again, packing to leave once more was sobering. We couldn’t help but meditate on the meaning of our great adventure.
If we thought it would help us make sense of our lives (where to live, what to strive for, our own desires, our jobs), coming back to CA only muddled things further. Having experienced life in different and amazing spots around the world, our old neighborhood seemed quiet, and compared to walkable city neighborhoods — lifeless. Some other parts of Bay Area — seemed at times uninspired, snobby and crazy expensive, or downright dangerous. It doesn’t help of course that after half a year of chasing the perfect season of sunshine, we landed in a cold and rainy winter. It will take some time to rediscover and fall in love again with the Bay Area. Though, an ocean walk on a sunny day certainly does help.
Getting on the road for the second leg of our journey, the excitement also seems a bit dimmer. There is no longer the thrill of setting sail on a new unprecedented adventure, so long anticipated. Of course, we’re looking forward to the next and new destinations. Yet, they also somehow seem less real, now that we are back in the states. It’s important to note that traveling continuously also means that we’ve continuously had to make decisions about everything that in normal lives is already decided (as in the basics of where you will be, how will you get there, where you will live there, where you will get dinner, etc.). Decision fatigue set in and we are a bit more indecisive about our next destinations. There is all the hope that a rest in Buenos Aires will help with that, and we do look forward to the second European leg of the journey — wherever that will lead!
Overall, we had hoped stepping away from the daily grind of work and routine would lead to a richer sense of life. In some ways it did. The occasional sensation I used to have of sitting in a waiting room and waiting for life to start has disappeared. We are definitely on the train now.
On the other hand, our nomadic existence often feels like a vacation from real life, despite all our attempts to normalize it. We’ve been told it is because we are moving too fast… and maybe we are. But that speed, that desire to absorb everything around us like a sponge — it is also an essential part of our identity. So, maybe this second leg of our journey needs to have a different goal — that of accepting who we are, and of figuring out how to build our lives to take the best advantage of those qualities and to get the most enjoyment and impact out of them.
