...Come Home for Love

Written and Posted from Hong Kong

Exactly one hundred and eight days ago, we sat in a tiny little hotel room somewhere close to JFK and wrote the post that preceded this journey by an evening and a long-ass plane ride. I am writing to you now from a tiny little hotel room in Hong Kong, about to spend another 16 hours on a plane to get back home.

There are a lot of reasons that we decided to take this journey. At least, I think there were a lot of reasons that we decided to take it. Now it just seems like we decided to take a journey so that we could see what there was to see, and now we have seen some of it, and we are coming home, where we will stay until we decide to take another journey again. This is enough of a reason to me now. I have thought about this post almost since the day that we left on our trip, because I am the type of person who thinks of the ending while we're just at the beginning, and I am not likely to become a different type of person any time soon, try as I might. I thought I would be able to say something profound, like tell you some kind of story about what I learned about myself on this trip. But what I learned is, of course, something I've known for a long time, a mantra that some of you are probably so sick of: you take yourself wherever you go. But see, sometimes you get to go to really cool places. And when you do, and you're able to appreciate the coolness of the places while you're actually in them, well then the self that you've taken along with you is one lucky girl.

I will share with you this one thought that I can't get out of my mind, because it seems appropriate, given the title of this post. I don't know where the original quote came from, but the more that I think about it, the more I think that the idea that you go out for adventure and come home for love seems...oversimplified to me. Because I went out for adventure and managed to find love all around me, everywhere I looked, particularly when I looked to the man standing next to me. And I'm coming home for love, but also for an adventure in Boston that I'm really just really really excited about. Basically, over the course of the past three months I've concluded that love and adventure are often the same thing, that you can go out to experience the world, or you can have an adventure all by yourself, amidst the comforts of your hometown. I wish I could explain to you guys why this means so much to me, but I can't seem to get the words right so I'll just tell you that all of you are part of the adventure that I'm so excited to get home to, and all of you are part of the love that I was sad and nervous to leave behind for three months. But in the end, it was your adventurous spirits who helped to motivate me to find a way for us to take this trip, and as usual, I took your love right along with me. Thanks for that.

I'll stop with the philosophy long enough to tell you that we'll be in New York tomorrow by 2pm, (even though we leave Hong Kong tomorrow at 10am). And I'll also tell you that this isn't the very last post for this blog, because there are still some trip stories to tell you, and tons of pictures to put up, and unnecessary advice about traveling that we want to share with you, and oh yeah, that adventure we're about to start in Boston!

So thanks for following along on this journey, for reading this blog and supporting us, and letting us complain to you about so many things. Thanks for dealing with the fact that we didn't always have a fast enough internet connection to give you pictures, or even a post. Thanks for offering your comments and your suggestions and special e-birthday wishes to Matt. If you don't hear from us for a couple of days, it's because we're too busy brushing our teeth with water FROM THE TAP, walking into public restrooms just because there's toilet paper there, and stuffing our faces with meals that involve neither rice nor curry nor lentils. See you at Vino's!