Thursday. Today marks the four year mark since Dominica, Liesl, Luciana and I arrived at JFK Airport in New York City and awaited our very first flight as a family to head overseas. That was the beginning of the adventure that we are now on. A lot has changed since that day, but the main goal has remained constant – a journey to find home and to raise our children as global citizens. Four years later and we are more excited about and more committed to that goal than ever.
It is amazing to see that our dreams really came true and we have spent a huge portion of the time since that original flight actually living around the world and doing what we set out to do. For a couple years there in the middle we had some times when it seemed like things were not really going to work. We’ve had a lot of changes and unplanned events, but here we are. We did our epic tour of Europe in 2012. We knew by 2014 that we were on our way to live abroad full time and all of 2015 and thus far in 2016 have been spent living the dream. And no plans to stop. This has been one crazy adventure.
And we already know where we are off to next: Moldova. With the NTG Lab equipment going offline today, a lot of the normal work that I do is not able to be done for the next two weeks which means that it is a perfect time for us to get away, again. This is a much, much shorter trip that we did last time to the Balkans. This time will be a train trip and only to the country right next door. No big driving for me, I get to relax, which will be awesome. Really looking forward to this excursion.
We decided that we are not going to be going to Odessa in Ukraine like we had been planning. I have a friend who grew up in the Crimea and we spoke and she said that having talked to friends in Odessa that things are not very safe there right now and it is not a good time to be visiting. Military in the streets and extreme, sudden poverty with the country actively at war and real fear of invasion as the occupied Crimea is just over the horizon on the Black Sea. We were told that for the Ukraine, we should stick to the rural west or Kiev.