I was born in Southern California, grew up there, and went to college there.
My family managed to move even more often that my Army-brat husband did. Due to being renters, changing school districts, changing jobs, whatever the reason, we averaged a move every other year while growing up. I had lived in something like 13 houses by the time I was 16 and went off to college.
But, even though I moved so often, we always lived in Southern California, and it never occurred to me to live anywhere else. Where else do you have such amazing beaches and mountains? An utter lack of humidity?
Smog-induced gorgeous sunsets?
And now I own a house in Mississippi.
MISSISSIPPI.
A state I never even dreamed of living in when I was younger. I just had fun spelling it.
Of course, I don’t live in the house that we own anymore. And since getting married, I’ve lived in:
San Diego, California (where they have road signs warning you to beware of illegal immigrants crossing the road)
Port Hueneme, California (where they have strawberry fields on the sides of the road)
Iwakuni, Japan (where I couldn’t understand any of the roadsigns)
Great Mills, Maryland (where they have roadsigns warning you to beware of the Amish and their horse-drawn carriages on the road)
Gulfport, Mississippi (where all we saw was destruction on the side of the road when we first moved there after Katrina)
And now we’re in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (where they have drive-thru daiquiri stands on the side of the road)
And I love it. I love experiencing the different cultures and look forward to where else we will journey.
I’m not even sure if we’ll settle back in California when our Navy life is over. That’s still at least 10 years away.
And I’ve learned that I really don’t have any control over where I’ll be then.
And that God can come up with a much better long-term plan than I ever can.
Ξ September 14th, 2009 | → 5 Comments | ∇ Kids |
“Mommy, in Ice Age 3, if Sid was trying to milk a boy cow, what did he grab?”
I didn’t get the chance to travel much when I was younger. I was born and grew up in California. In middle school my family went on a vacation to Hawaii, and it was the first time I flew in an airplane. We visited Las Vegas fairly often, but didn’t even visit many of the other states.
My only journey to another country was an ill-advised drive to Tijuana with a cousin.
When I thought about traveling in my futre, I had vague ideas of traveling to countries like England, France and Scotland, and doing some sightseeing. I didn’t really have an interest in the people of other cultures and definitely did not dream of living in another country!
But in college I started going to various Christian conferences with friends, and the road-trip became a much-beloved tradition. I can’t even count the number of times my friends and I drove to Colorado, Texas and New Mexico for various trips.
Then after my junior year of college, I took that fateful trip to Cambodia that completely changed the way I think of travel.
I learned that I could love a whole people. That my heart could break just thinking of their spiritual bondage. That travel could be more meaningful than just seeing a few sites.
And that one trip to Cambodia brought with it two visits to Bangkok, Thailand, where a man offered to buy me from the woman I was walking through the hotel with.
Then there was a second trip to Cambodia, which also included two more trips to Thailand where I actually got to spend a night with one of my best friends who was in Thailand for a couple months.
Later I went on a short-term trip to Moscow, Russia. That trip brought with it a few days in Germany, where we got to attend a festival and see the Gutenberg Bible.
From Russia we then went to Slovenia, a country I didn’t even know existed before I discovered I was going there.
And in Slovenia some friends and I rented a car (which I was elected to drive since I drove stick) and then we drove through the Alps to Austria, where we had lunch, and then to Italy where we had gelato. The switchbacks and hairpin turns I navigated that day in the Alps numbered in the hundreds, but so did the gorgeous hidden views of countries I had never expected to be in.
A few years later found me actually living in Japan for three and a half years. Two of my children were born there in a Japanese hospital.
I’ve also been able to visit Jamaica, Cancun and Mazatlan on various vacations.
I have no idea where we might travel next or for how long.
But I’m sure it will be more than I dreamed fifteen years ago.
