Day 176: Doubleplus

Today I celebrate being in a foreign country for exactly twice as long as my previous record.

My Spanish Summer of 2011 adventure lasted 88 days - but it felt like much, much longer. Everything was constantly new and exciting, which made time bend in a strange and wonderful way. Each day when I'd sit down to blog, I'd feel like I had just lived three days in one 24 hour span!

But life now - despite being in a foreign country - has its routine down pat. Wake up. Go to school. Teach. Go to after school lessons. Teach. Public transportation time home. Talk to roomies. Eat. Unwind. Rinse. Repeat.

I love my schedule, but it's not something I could keep up forever. I don't understand how the majority of the world's population can pick a profession and stick with it, in the same town, with the same people, day after day. It reminds me of a passage from a book called "The Mermaid Chair" (which, if I'm being honest, was actually a really awful book, but this one quote made up for it):

"I could even feel how perishable all my moments really were, how all my life they had come to me begging to be lived, to be cherished even, and the impassive way I’d treated them."

Surely there are careers that can make a person feel alive every day for the rest of their life... But I'd have to think these types of jobs are relatively few and far between. And so my solution is that, until I find one such job, I shall cheat the system and just keep jetsetting to a new place with new people and a new job. :) It's like I've found a loophole in the system. ;)

I remember back in middle school when Amanda and I used to discuss how life was just be born, go to school, get a job, marry, have kids, die. We always felt it was a very constraining sort of thing that was expected from us and we'd try to devise ways to get out of it. We didn't want to be bullied into a "normal" life - we wanted a crazy, adventurous one full of wonder.

Maybe it was "child's talk," but based on being around so many children a day, I'd have to say child's talk is way often more intelligent, insightful and creative than adult talk. It's like the Little Prince says - Adults don't understand much. You have to explain things to them a lot, and sometimes they still don't understand. ^_^

If there's one thing I've learned about myself in my 176 days I've been on this adventure - the longest adventure of my life - it's this: I am far from being an "adult."

And I couldn't be prouder. ;)

So while my friends are getting married and having babies and worrying about their career paths, I'll be sitting here, coloring and singing songs with little kids, pondering the next country I want to jetset to.

XOXO