2021 Travels

 

I forgot to make an end of the year recap of our 2021 travels. We lived in Latvia, vacationed in Iceland, spent home leave in Texas for 2 months, and then moved to DC for my language training right before New Year's Day. That must be why I forgot.

Iceland was one major destination we managed to visit after COVID travel restrictions were loosened in Europe. It was a truly amazing and magical place worthy of your bucket list if you have that sort of thing. It was a direct flight from Riga and we like to vacation on direct flights, so that usually gives us some goals for our exploration.

I think I have more of an exploration list or a "live life to the fullest" list. The "bucket list" term focuses too much on the end and the possibility of running out of time. We have time now. How soon is now? That's a great song by The Smiths.

I'm sure I won't ever be able to use the maximum 45 days of home leave ever again, but the stars aligned for it to work in my PCS timing. Fortunately we have a house in Texas to live in. It's fully furnished as a short-term rental property when we're not there. The common joke of "homeless leave" instead of home leave didn't apply to us.

Finally, we moved to DC for 6 months of language training right before New Year's Day. That dot is a small blip of time really for the year 2021.

The pack out of our Household Effects (HHE) and car from Riga in Oct was the last time we saw of most of our things for about a year. This job isn't just about living overseas and having cool vacation spots closer to an overseas home. It's also about losing our sense of home for long stretches of time as we transition around the world.