i'm back

In my last post (over a year ago!) I said I wanted to start writing more here since we were planning a trip to Portugal. Well since then, we moved away from Portland, went to Boston to visit my brother, and then spent some time in Portugal in July. I wish we could have traveled more around Europe and seen more friends, but we were limited by our funds. We chose Portugal because I had read online that it was one of the cheaper countries to travel in in Europe (which was true). It was great to meet up with our friend Ondrej and his wife in Lisbon and then later in Porto.

Portugal was wonderful, and I wish we could go back this summer  (and every summer!), but I don't feel like writing about our trip now as it was so long ago. Our camera broke early on into the trip when we were in Coimbra (an old, mysterious and beautiful university town) so we were freed from the self-imposed obligation to document our trip.

As a result of that experience, I'm seriously considering traveling camera-free from now on. After all, I travel to experience new places and people, not to have photos to show my friends and family. There are postcards for that, right? But at the same time, it would be nice to have images to go along with whatever I write. We'll see.

So in thinking about this blog, I've decided that I want it to be more than a travel blog. We have no plans to go abroad until hopefully summer next year, and I want to write about topics I find interesting and worth sharing as I come across them.

Our lives are completely different now, with LB being in graduate school. These following two observations are totally unrelated, but it's my first time living so far from an ocean and also the first time living in a car-dependent city without a car. It was a bit of a struggle at first, arriving here in 90+ degree weather last August without a clue, but we've found our way of making things work and have come to really love living here. We spend most of our time in a small area near where we live, but even so, I don't have that trapped feeling I used to have while living in Florida as a teenager.

I'll probably write more about living car-free later.

leaving soon

Since the last time I wrote, another earthquake happened in Christchurch. No one I knew was seriously injured or killed, thank God, but the town we once called home was destroyed. I honestly don't even know what to say about that and the lives that were lost.

Just over a month ago, L got into grad school, and so we are moving far away from here. It's a welcomed change. The routine of this life here is getting to me. If I were passionately pursuing some kind of dream here, it wouldn't be so bad. The best thing about the almost 3 years we've lived in Portland are the friends we've made and being so close (4 miles away!) to my sister.

Other than that, I don't have much to say. I'm trying to get back into writing on here, and since we're planning to go to Portugal this summer before we move, I figure I may as well start now.