In 2008, I quit my corporate job, sold off everything I owned and moved overseas with my husband Drew. Since then we've traveled around the world, started our careers over as creative types and nurtured our love of sleeping in late. Oh and we had a baby. Cole, our almost 2 year old has been traveling since he was four months old and probably knows more Thai than me (not that he brags).
Latest
Your Letters: The Julie/Julia of Conscious Eating
My name is Jonna, I’m a 21 year old girl and I’ve recently returned from a 2-week trip to volunteer in Chiang Rai, Thailand. I went on this trip because I was sort of facing a cross-road in my life: I’m about to graduate in August, I am getting a degree in Human Resource Management (gag), and I literally have no idea what I want to do when I am actually out on my own. So, I decided to go to get my feet wet in solo traveling and set the pace for my post-undergrad life. It was a WONDERFUL experience. I loved absolutely every...
read moreA Bike Crash, A Thai Holiday and Flirting with Pai
The road from Chiang Mai to Pai, Thailand has 762 bends, or so the t-shirts say. I didn’t even begin counting them. We’ve lived in Thailand on and off for 10 months over the last three years but we had always skipped Pai, the peaceful, mountain town famous for hippies and having not much to do. It’s just three hours north, up over the mountains in a series of switch backs and steep climbs, a fun, challenging route for a motorbike, so we finally decided to make the trek. We packed a backpack, strapped to the front of our...
read moreIt’s That Time of Year Again
Hello, college students about to graduate and surfing online for “travel overseas” or “I just graduated college, now what?” or “How to travel for free”. Welcome. One of the great joys of having this website is getting to influence 20-year-olds, and hopefully convincing them to travel before they are old like me (35), have a job (I quit mine), married (9 years and counting), have a house (sold it), and have kids (1 boy, age 2). Because while it is possible to travel when you’re married with kids and...
read more“Life Isn’t Just a Sequence of Waiting for Things to Be Done.”
I love Ze Frank. He recently ran a kickstarter campaign to raise $50,000 for a new online show, and ended up raising almost $150,000. If you don’t know Ze Frank, he’s online-famous for a number of things that have gone viral. He has a site here and you can see his TED Talks profile here. This video An Invocation for Beginnings was posted a few days ago. I can’t even describe how full of awesome it is: Can’t view the video? Try Youtube. Thanks to my husband @Drewgilbert for finding this. (Also, I’ll save...
read moreAnd Then We Slipped Away Into the Night…
This post is a bit belated, since I took the last month off from writing to sulk, read two dozen books, drop off the face of the planet, complain to my friends, pick myself back up, figure out a plan — all while being propped up by my husband, who apparently will suffer through almost anything to get Thai food. Okay, so here goes: we left China. Five months earlier than planned. I didn’t learn fluent Mandarin, I didn’t make any friends, I didn’t get a wild story out of it or anything. We spent a ton of...
read moreCole Turns 2
Weekly photo: Where is Cole? Location: ??? I am blown away at how fast these last two years have gone, how fast he continues to develop, and how utterly, hilariously amazing this kid can be. Even the rare times when we find ourselves frustrated (it’s safe to say these are the times he is frustrated too, unable to tell us what it is he needs), he finds some new way to surprise us and make us laugh. I am so very lucky to have the charming toddler with the three foot long lashes in my life. Happy Birthday, Bubba! Share...
read moreFound In Translation: Week 5 (VIDEO)
Some changes up ahead. I’ll write about it next week. I’m unplugging for a bit. (You can also view this video on youtube.) Share this:EmailFacebook
read moreThe Buzzing, Numbing, Spicy Sichuan Pepper
When we first arrived in Beijing, and didn’t speak a word of Mandarin, every meal was a game of menu roulette. We’d point to some characters on the menu, nod like crazy and hope something resembling food would come out. One night, we had a particularly spicy chicken dish, and about half way through eating it, my mouth felt numb. My head felt weird. I felt like I had licked a battery or stuck my tongue in an electric socket. “Wow, there must be a ton of MSG in this,” I remember telling Drew. I was wrong. A month later...
read moreThe Upsides
Thank you for the supportive comments to yesterday’s post. I wanted to quickly share this story: I came home yesterday, an hour early, to see Cole and the Ayi in the other room, laying on the bed. Well, the Ayi was laying anyway, Cole was sitting on her back like he was riding a pony. Laughing. They were watching a movie on the laptop. In Mandarin. He now speaks more Chinese words than English ones (he can even repeat phrases in Chinese that he doesn’t know better than in English) and when I...
read moreNotes in Progress (Alternate Title: Freaking The F Out)
I have to write this out, otherwise I won’t have the nerve to admit this later. I don’t like to show doubt, to reveal my uncertainty, but I must seem so confident to someone reading this blog, a woman and her family charge around the world, learning languages, taking photos and kicking butt! Yes, it’s just like that. Well, except when it’s not. Right now, I’m sitting in a cafe at the ground level of our apartment complex. There’s four skyscrapers housing Korean, Chinese and expat residents and a few of...
read more