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“My goal is to run out of pages in my passport.”

As I sit here getting ready to leave my latest local house sitting gig, I have to admit, this is really going to be a cool way to travel the slow route! I just completed a weekend spent with the most adorable two kitties that I would love to take home! They are a hoot and I miss the rambunctiousness of a cat’s personality. I’m a dog lover as well but this definitely sealed the deal that I love their spunky personalities a little bit more.

This sit was located about an hour from my house outside of DC. I packed for the three days as I didn’t plan to go home in between and was happy with all the projects I got done while spending quality time with this family’s little loves.

The best part of this sit is my cat allergies only flared up a little bit. To about a 2-3 scale. The last two dog ones I got up to a 10++ that lasted for over a week. After that one, I researched the term “highly allergic dogs” and came up with a great list that I will look at before I do future dog sits. The last two sits had dogs on the list……um, could be why I was in such bad shape with the allergies. I knew there were some dogs, like poodles, that were better for allergies but I didn’t realize how bad some dogs dander is to those that suffer.

My local sits are over now. I’ve done three and I’ve locked down a Germany sit for December so I’m going to go with that at this point and be comfortable in my reviews that are outstanding. It’s been incredible, amazing and overall totally worth it to me to try this out and I would highly recommend it to others!

 

Edit: Several weeks later I received a request to sit again for the same family but I have a conflict otherwise I probably would have done it.

 

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

Malcolm Forbes

I am a pretty big fan of Lauren from https://www.neverendingfootsteps.com, so when I saw that she had a book out, I jumped at getting it. I dove right into to reading it this summer. She is a world-wide backpack traveler/expat and all around sweet girl. She decided to pack up her life and travel around the world, which shocked her family, as she has both anxiety and some health issues.

Lauren is wonderful. I love her unfiltered honesty! It is one of my favorite things about her and is why I always go back to her blog. She keeps it real. Not every trip/adventure is going to be Instagram-worthy and the moments of hugging the toilet for days after eating something wicked never seem to make it to your feed.

She is very relatable to me, and I adore her quirks and her relationship with her boyfriend, Dave, who is the complete opposite of her. I can relate to her “opposites attract” story.

A couple of themes I picked up and have been thinking about since I read the book, have been her loss of friendships and a sense of belonging. She felt the most while she was in Chiang Mai and I suspect that is why she was so happy there. We all are happier when we have friendships, even those darned introverts! While it was important for her to see the world, the hole of missing friendships was integral to her moving back to Portugal and later back to the UK.

Jason and I know that we will need those friendships and really appreciate the confirmation from this book. We are looking at traveling but also putting down some roots where there are established expat communities that hike or bike, have book clubs and such.

It’s best to read this book as a beautiful extension of her blog and you won’t be disappointed. She offers similar stories with more in depth descriptions. I love her, and if you regularly read her blog, this book will feel like some of her best blog articles.

Book can be found on her blog and on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Travel-World-Disaster-Prone-ebook/dp/B0116TQDG8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536934661&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+not+travel+the+world

 

“Live the life people write novels about.” 

Think it’s time to gather up what is going on in the pending expat life in our household! There is a lot going on, which is actually very crazy to think since this adventure is really set to start in 60 months!!

Housesitting Updates:

Last weekend was  the second go-around with the local dog sitting gig and the pups are just angels!!! Jason came with me this time and I think part of it is that dogs like him and his vibe!!! 🙂 Jason keeps looking at me like I have lost my mind and I just don’t know what to say! This is like a completely different house sitting experience which I am so happy about! It goes to show that one good or bad experience should not overshadow the next one! It definitely made me more excited about house sitting again!

After a couple hours of eating dinner together, playing with the dogs and playing on our computers, I left to go home and Jason stayed overnight to ease my allergies. His overnight was more eventful than mine as there was a major party in the neighborhood that kept the pups awake until almost 2am. Jason texted at 5:45am and said that they didn’t want to get up to go out, but eventually they were coaxed outside.  They came back in to nap and nap and nap some more!

Jason and I swapped out the housesitting about 8am and I was here until the family returned. Jason went off to ride his bike on this gorgeous summer day!

My next house sitting gig is the weekend after the 4th of July for two of the cutest little kitties! I can’t wait to snuggle on them!! Hopefully, it goes well as I haven’t heard from the owner after reaching out to her twice. Trusted Housesitters said to just wait at least a week and then reach back out to them again. It seems proper protocol is to assume that you are going until told otherwise, even if the owner doesn’t communicate. I’m still processing this!

Cleaning Out:

This past week I started going through closets and drawers to get rid of stuff for donation and also to sell in our neighborhood swap site. It was really pretty easy now to go through our stuff knowing that in a couple years, we plan to sell off most of it anyways. You look at things that at one point in life felt like it was important and now it no longer holds the same appeal. It made me start wondering why all this stuff held such a strong appeal to us. Anyways, I gathered 3 large bags of old clothes and already dropped them off. I sold several items in the swap site with more to go! I need to tackle the basement, but that just feels daunting to me right now.

Job Analysis:

We have been making spreadsheets and starting to compare Jason’s position at work. He has a promotion track and a specialist track to choose from. We are talking, analyzing and processing how we want the next 60 months of our lives to look like and which path is best suited for us. Every choice comes with pros and cons and each choice is “right” in it’s own way, but we are feeling out what is the best “right” for us at this point in our life.

Recipe Blog:

Not sure if I mentioned that we have a recipe blog that we started back in December. We both work on it and post two recipes a week. We are researching and analyzing to optimize its growth. We know that most food blogs take two years to gain traction and we are officially past the 25% mark.  We haven’t killed each other, yet, so that is a win for us!! Our photos are getting much better and the process is more streamlined. Jason is a little concerned that we might not be able to continue the recipe site as traveling expats. I think that is a valid point, so we are talking about being open minded to switching it up a bit if needed as the time comes.

Thailand Travel:

We are getting ready to visit Thailand in August and are anxious to see what it has to offer as it’s one of our potential expat locations. That is leading to more blog reading and wishing we just planned that Thailand trip to be a bit longer! It is a family vacation and not an expat scouting trip so we are casually looking. I would have loved to have spent time exploring  Chiang Mai. We will be in Bangkok for 3 days and hope to see how it feels and how the prices stack up against what the blogs have been saying.

Bulgaria Travel:

Jason and Spence are headed on an 8 day “dude trip” this coming week with a 2 day stop in Bulgaria!! It is definitely not a sought-out travel destination for most but it is an up and coming expat location due to the low cost of living and awesome climate when it’s too hot and humid in Thailand or SE Asia!  Spencer is looking at a school there and Jason is scoping it out from a potential expat’s view.

All in all, after writing all of this, I’m surprised how much is “in the works” this early on in the process. Could be because we are massive planners, not sure. I even started to make a list of places that I want to see and how long I could be at each location. Amazing how fast the time will go!