Our Year Abroad: May 2012

The sweet taste of home and the bitter after burn of departure swell through our souls. After 36 hours of traveling, and some couch surfing, we're comfortably safe and sound in Santa Barbara. Many of you might remember that we were planning on staying in South America until June. Obviously our plans changed. There are a number of factors that went into our decision to come home early, too many to name here. In a word, we caught up with our future down in South America and we were excited to come home to start living it as the present. Although I already miss some of the simplicities of life down south, it's good to be home. Santa Barbara is an absolutely stunning landscape and city. We are all lucky to live here.

So, where do we go from here? Do I continue to keep up with the blog? Will you continue to read it?

I'm going to keep writing for a while. I'm not sure where we are going in the next few months, so I'll keep writing and posting what we're doing.

Right now, we know what the next 6 weeks hold. We are house sitting in Santa Barbara. After that, we're not sure. We'd like to find another house sitting job or perhaps even better, a permanent place to call home (any ideas?).

My future is starting to become more clear. I've been notified by my school district that I'll be teaching at a new school (Hope). This is also bitter/sweet. I'm sad to leave Vieja where I've dedicated a number of years of my life. But, I'm also excited by a new challenge and a new culture. As of right now, I don't know anything else. But, that's one of the exciting parts of living...the mystery of what's around the next bend.

For the summer I'm looking forward to teaching paragliding at Elings park with Eagle paragliding (www.eagleparagliding.com) and to teach bouldering, climbing and surfing classes on my own. If anybody is interested in learning any of these sports, let me know.

Oh yeah, I'm also planning on stopping by VV for the graduation ceremony as some of you requested. Congrats!

That's all for now and I look forward to keeping you up to date as we start to resettle in paradise.

Here's another installment of photos!