Why hello 2019!

We’ve now been on the road for over 350 days and visited 17 countries (Brice is up to 20) on 5 continents. We’ve stayed in three cities longer than a month (San Jose, Costa Rica; London and now Chiang Mai) and I’ve now officially worked abroad.

We’ve seen some of the world’s most impressive man made sights including the Taj Mahal, the Western Wall, Petra and the Panama Canal.

And caught views of the massive Himalayas, viewed the perfect waters of the San Blas Islands in between Colombia and Panama, seen more stars than I knew existed in the Andes Mountains, and spotted the Big 5 animals on safari in Kenya.

I’ve read 24 books and not been nearly as consistent with blogging (sorry followers!).

I’ve taken over 4,000 pictures and fussed over way too many Instagram posts.

We’ve eaten insanely good food from spicy tacos in Mexico to crisp roti bread in India to rich chocolate rugelach in Israel.

To offset all the eating, we’ve attempted to still exercise wherever we are in the world, joining Crossfit gyms where we can and I even ran a half marathon in Thailand (very unplanned!).

We’ve completed intense multi-day treks in both Colombia and Peru, and day hikes in nearly every other country we visited including in the Himalayas in India and the deserts of Jordan.

We snorkeled in the gorgeous San Blas Islands and went SCUBA diving in the crystal clear waters of the Red Sea in Jordan.

We had the most amazing happy hour watching the sunset in the middle of the African plains, watching a hyena chase a wildebeest and sharing stories with our Kenya guides. We were kissed by giraffes, had breakfast with hippos and adopted a baby orphaned elephant.

We learned enough Spanish to have basic conversations with locals, while failing at any other language like Arabic, Swahili and Thai (being able to say “thank you” is pretty good, right?).

I enjoyed two weeks over the summer back in Oregon, celebrating a good friend’s birthday, having the best night at “wine camp” and soaking up the beautiful views from my parents’ porch.

We partied at the Untold Music Festival in Romania and enjoyed afternoon tea on the 122^nd floor of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. We hot air ballooned over small villages outside Jaipur, India and over the Masai Mara national park in Kenya.

We occasionally cried over homesickness or feeling uncomfortable or gaining weight; or yelled at each other over how much sightseeing to do. We struggled from time to time with missing the ease of home and the important life events happening there.

We’ve made friends with people everywhere we’ve gone in the world. We were visited by Brice’s dad and three sets of friends while in Costa Rica.

We enjoyed time with numerous friends in London, both planned and surprise visits, and celebrated my 34^th birthday there over a traditional Sunday roast with a big group. We got to do dinner with friends who live in Delhi; and I spent a week sightseeing, laughing and Boomerang’ing with my dear friend Lauren in Thailand.

We’ve seen so many different kinds of communities, from the Peruvians who live on floating reed islands in the middle of Lake Titicaca, to the Bedouins who live in tents in the Jordanian desert. We’ve been welcomed into homes and experienced such hospitality nearly everywhere in the world.

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The stories and memories could just go on and on. It’s been a whirlwind of a year with some downs but so many ups.

Here’s to an incredible 2018 and an even better 2019.

And in case you want more, here’s one second from every day of 2018: