As you may have guessed, I've not been writing here since my travels came to an end. This is a blog about wanderlust after all. I will summarize a bit of what's been going on since Japan, however. I flew back to Sydney and spent a few days there. It was cold in Sydney with winter falling over the southern hemisphere. I was glad to have my warm coat at my disposal. One of my close friends' sister from back home happened to be visiting the city when I was there and we connected and spent a rainy day together. That weekend I made my way back on the long flight to Canada.
Coming home was a bit of a shock to the system. I was happy to see my close friends and family again, no doubt, but the change in routine and the reality of not traveling anymore started to set in quickly enough and I was on quite a downer. I knew that actually living abroad would change things for me. That was part of the point of doing it. But I never knew I still had such a huge capacity for change after all the changes I've made in my life over the past 5 years or so. It just showed me that there is no limit to new experiences opening up your mind and broadening your horizons. The people I met while away were the real reasons behind this even more than the beautiful places I visited. One thought that permeated my mind while in Japan is that there are beautiful places in every corner of the world. People travel and say how beautiful this or that place is and how amazed they are at that beauty, but frankly, I've ceased to be surprised at such things. I'm not exactly unmoved by the places I visit, but I am now more than ever almost expecting to see wonderful things when I travel. And that's kind of cool. It emphasizes the fact that it's the people and the differences in culture and things that you learn about a place that are the aspects of travel and affect us and teach us the most. To be able to experience all of that amongst natural beauty is the bonus. At any rate, I can't say enough how lucky I have been for the experiences I've taken away in the time I was gone from my home. I have yet another new perspective on my own existence and I'm open to new ideas and experiences moving forward. It's made me even bolder, I think, to take some chances in life. And speaking of which...
I decided to take advantage of having some time off that I've actually never had in my life, and registered to take an intensive, 4-day per week, month-long French course. I wanted to just be immersed in the language and speaking it every day. I figured it would help me if I got interviews for bilingual positions. I can speak perfectly well, but I don't often get the chance to, so I can get a little rusty and trip over my words when I'm on the spot. I also got certified to teach spinning that month.
Since then I've moved out of my brother-in-law and sister's place into a house downtown (living downtown is so much more my pace!) with two roommates. It's working out well. I've got a part-time job at a health food store down here and teaching spinning once a week now. Still looking for something full-time and better paying in order to save some money and pay for the courses I took in July, but I've been so very grateful for all the free time here this summer. I've been busy, don't get me wrong, but it's been a totally different busy than I've ever known before.
I've been cycling a lot in the past month and a half (July wasn't the best for motivation on my part, nor for the weather). I'm madly in love with the bike at the moment, heading out about 6 days per week. I participated in a TTT at the end of August and had a lot of fun. I've actually done a faster TT before than what we did, but none of us had ridden together in echelon before (and most of the rest of my team had never done it at all), so there was a bit of getting comfortable with each other in the first lap of the race, then there was the fact that it was a tough course and some of us (ahem - moi) weren't in top shape at the time. Nevertheless, the point was to have fun and we did! We even got a second place medal!!! I've never had a medal in my life!! How cool is that????! I hope I'm around next spring for the next installation of this same race, as we plan to do it again and put our last result to shame. :)
I have plans for the near future that I'm working on, both travel and career related, but I will be keeping them all to myself until things are clearer and more concrete. In the meantime there likely won't be much activity here, but check in from time to time and we'll head off to another part of the world together soon! Thanks for reading and spending time virtually traveling with me. I'm glad I can share it. xo
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