From There to Here

byCarolEll

758 followers

Updated 8 years ago

Wow!! It's been 2 months since I last checked in on WA, and I see that I've been missing some things. I've been spending my weekdays working on one thing or another, and spending a lot of my non-work time processing the myriad lessons I learned on my recent "trip of a lifetime." I've also been increasingly missing WA and the online friends I've made here, so I decided to check in. Hope all is well with all of you!!

I spent 3 weeks in September visiting Mongolia, China and Tibet. I'd never been to Asia, and the trip was an eye-popping experience of new sights, sounds, sensations and lessons. This was a big one, folks, in terms of knowledge and changes in perspectives; the insights just keep coming!! Because the richness of experience simply can't be described in sound bites or sentences, some may turn into blog posts here.

One of my traveling companions (our friendship started in our freshman year of college, 47! years ago) has visited 112 countries, and said that this trip was one of the most meaningful. Now he wants me to go to North Korea with him; although he's comfortable traveling alone, he enjoys company, and his wife, who joined us for the TIbet and China legs, doesn't want to go. Neither do I, although I must admit that the idea intrigues me more with each passing day. He promises that we will join a state-authorized tour, which will minimize any political issues. He aims to go, with or without me.

My husband, who managed a platoon on the Korean DMZ and had no interest in returning to the Orient, declined to join us on the recent trip. He thinks my friend is nuts, but won't stand in my way if I want to go. For now, and maybe for always, the no far outweighs the yes; among the reasons is the fact that there are a lot of places that we would like to visit together first.

But still ...

If you want to read a pictorial travelogue of our trip, you can visit my friend's blog at www.travelswithmoose.blogspot.com. I think that he has documented most of his trips there.

My WA website is languishing, but that's OK; I'm currently not sure what I want to do with it and am toying with some directional tweaks. It's definitely not forgotten!

I'm looking forward to catching up with my WA friends, and glad to be back online. I don't think I'll return to being a daily contributor for the time being, but you never know ... life is lived one moment at a time, and what occurs to me tonight, tomorrow or next week will likely be different than what I'm thinking and feeling now.

In the meantime ... Glad to be back for the moment, if not longer!