The life of Nomads

I got to thinking the other day about how our life has evolved from being pretty settled and routine to that of nomads wandering the globe looking for a home. From the age of 8 months, I lived in the same house up until I left for college. I can trace some of my friends back all the way to elementary school and before. My oldest friend, Susie, a neighbor from across the street, and I have been friends since the time we could speak. Never changing homes meant that I went from elementary to middle to high school with practically the same people. I enjoyed the stability of constantly being surrounded by familiarity. When I left for college, however, that constancy and stability that I had so depended on, fell from under me. After I graduated from college, we, Kyle and I, decided that we wanted a life of adventure, we wanted to see the world before "settling down" to lead a "typical" American life.


Here is a glimpse of our journey from the time we were married until now. (And in fact this list could be extended back to the beginning of college, but that is another post all together)

August 06- December 06 – We were actually married in September but our lease started in Aug. We lived in our apartment in Austin while Kyle finished what we thought would be his final semester in college.

December 06- March 07- We moved all of our belongings into my mother's garage, and we moved in with my mom after our lease in Austin was up. Living with my mom made financial sense, especially since we were leaving for our volunteer postions in Chile in March.

March 07- November 07- We lived in Chile with a wonderful host family, made absolutely NO money, and came back further in debt than we started.

November 07- July 08- We had planned on just moving in with my mom for a couple of months before we left for South Korea (where we would actually make money) to teach English. The original plan was to leave in March, but when all hell broke loose, and our plans fell to crap, we extended our stay to what we thought would only be through the summer.

July 08- mid August 08- Three week road trip visiting family and friends

August 08- October 08- Lived with our aunt in Seattle. Once again we thought we would be in Seattle for a couple of weeks, only until early September when we received news that once again Kyle would not be graduating.

October 08- Now – living in San Antonio, house sitting Grandma Dee Dee's house.

Dec. 5- Vanessa, if all our stones fall into place, will leave for South Korea, and hopefully Kyle will only be a month behind.

What made me think of writing this post in the first place was moving into Grandma Dee Dee's house. I realized that for nearly the entirety of our two years of marriage we have only lived together, just the two of us, for 4 months. Having a place to call our own, at least for this short time, has been really rewarding and gratifying. Although we are adventurous, and love traveling to the four corners of the world, we are also very domestic as well. We love to cook (not clean), throw dinner parties, decorate and anything else that one does in one's own home. There are times when I wish that we could have our own place, but that day will come, just not today. Today: explore and be nomads. Tomorrow: who knows?