The Privilege of Travel

Lately I've been reflecting on how significant travel is in our lives.  I love it.  I think it provides an amazing opportunity, regardless of where you're going.  When BK and I venture off to somewhere new, I would say we try hard to live in the quote above.

I do think travel is a privilege.  In an article I read last year, an author stated that at some point travel would be the ultimate luxury, but only because it requires the most precious commodity- time.  I agree.  Even when we're traveling, we have to work hard to be present with where we are and what we're experiencing.

I'm not sure how the value of travel was instilled so deeply in me, but looking back it seems that my parents made it a priority early on.  Maybe it was the numerous plane trips back and forth from Houston when I was a baby that prepped me.  Probably also the many road trips taken with my mom, sister and grandparents in their minivan.  When in high school, also endless mission trips, church trips, school trips and random family trips.  In college my parents also took us on a number of significant trips (England and Hawaii to name a few). My mom likes to say, "It might have been on a shoestring budget, but I made sure that the girls and I always went somewhere," and I appreciate that. My sisters and I still probably take this for granted, as we are always flabbergasted when people have not traveled.  For example, CMH's (middle sister) husband, who just recently took his first flight, at close to the age of 40- something that seems completely out of the question for us.

I don't think I realized the value of all this travel until I met BK, and only partially because he seemed to gawk at how much some of these things must have cost.  I don't say that to brag, but more to point out what a priority it was to my parents to make sure that we experienced new and different things.  As an adult now, I realize that they also had to make sacrifices to ensure that we had these experiences. Traveling with them, we were never allowed to just stay comfortable, but were pushed to experience new things and really appreciate where we were and that we got to be here. We traveled to Japan in 2008, which I think launched us into wanting to travel more to places that were a little off the beaten path.

If you get the chance to travel- to experience new things, do it.  It's amazing.  Live outside yourself and learn new things.  It's a great experience that you shouldn't pass up.

Celebrating the Little Things in a Serious Way

I'm learning to celebrate the little things these days.  And yes, you guessed it, I'm talking about the pups.  I find it quite frustrating that we can't move these behavior changes along a little quicker.  You would think that as a social worker, and someone who has advocated that people can't change their life overnight- that it takes time, I would be a little more understanding, but it's really irritating to me!

Last night I had a great victory.  I sat outside of our apartment (in the stairwell) for 30 minutes without the dogs making a peep.  Don't get me wrong, it was from 10:23 to 10:53, so very late in the day, but still- I was able to exit the apartment without a complete conniption fit happening.  So for now, if BK and I want to go have an after-dinner drink, it might actually be an option.

How I wish they'd spend their time...

Today was good too.  We had another appointment with the dog trainer and worked on walking the dogs. She actually thought they were good walkers.  She had me let go of the leashes and let them run along the sidewalk without being restrained.  They do a lot better with other dogs if they just have the chance to sniff and then move along.  Our dogs aren't aggressive, so once they sniff they move along and are always looking back to make sure we're still there.

The other thing today was that Tanner is stressed and making himself sick.  I'm not sure if this is because we went to Belgium and left him at the holiday home or because BK is now back in the US, but he has all kinds of digestive issues.  That's as far as I'll go into it, but I'm getting really tired of picking up after him and constantly running to the door to go outside.  I had a vet appointment scheduled, but after seeing him jump around, be excited about walking, take treats and be an all around good dog, the trainer was pretty certain that he is not sick- just acting out on his stress.

I say I need to celebrate the small things because I need to remember how far they've come since we moved into this apartment a little over three weeks ago.  They no longer bark every single time the building door opens, they no longer follow my every move in the apartment, they don't bark when they hear our neighbor's dog bark, and to top it off the weather has been nice the past couple of days.  Our neighbors are also more understanding and appreciate that we are working hard to get them acclimated. Looking on the bright side here!

We're at the end of our day in Basel.  Here's to more small successes tomorrow- it's a new day for all of us.

Laundry, Laundry, Everywhere

Actually that's not quite true.  BK and I have taken to wearing things more than just once and making them last.  Not the essentials, obviously those are one-wear only items, but jeans, sweaters, button downs and other items, those are to be worn numerous times.  It also helps that the highs over here are still somewhere between 40 and 60 degrees, so the sweating that occurs in Texas doesn't happen here.

All that said, in our new building, BK and I only get laundry days two days every two weeks. For example, we had Friday and Saturday, May 3 and 4, then not again until Friday and Saturday May 17 and 18.  Well, too bad for us, we were out of town those days. So that means that we don't have laundry days until Friday and Saturday, May 31 and June 1.  With the traveling we're planning to do this is not going to work for us, so we decided to purchase our own washer/dryer "kombi" to put in our apartment.

Here it is!  The washer/dryer combo...yes, that's a washer and dryer in one machine. Don't get me wrong, it takes forever to do a load of laundry.  There is an express load that only takes 35 minutes to wash and dry, but most normal size loads cannot be done in that time.  I would say it generally takes an hour or two to do a load of laundry, but that is downplayed by the fact that I can do laundry any time I want, or need, now.  It also drains into our bathtub, but that is really not a big issue.

Prior to this purchase, I literally cannot tell you how many times I got in trouble over laundry.  It all started because I put the wrong kind of coin in the machine.  You can only put 20 cent coins in our machine outside of the laundry room.  Oops- I put various types of coins and broke the machine.  The owner had it fixed and BK and I were still able to do laundry on our first two days.

Since then, anything and everything that has gone wrong in the laundry room gets blamed on me.  Random laundry bag in the laundry room?  We get a knock on the door asking about that.  Clothes left hanging in the drying room?  Another knock on the door inquiring as to if they are mine.  One time apparently the lint trap was not cleaned out and the owner came up to our apartment and had me come down and clean it!  I wasn't even the last one to do laundry.  Another tenant had done laundry after me, but I was the only one that the owner had seen that day!  Laundry can be a bit exhausting at times when you have to deal with all of this, especially when the owner does not speak ANY English- only German.

So now we have our washer/dryer kombi, which I am very excited about.  It's crazy how much you miss the privilege of being able to wash clothes whenever you want.  Enjoy it if you have it!