End in sight

Since my last post, I finished up my time in Thailand in the island of Phuket. I got better at surfing, (finally managing to catch the open face of waves!), and learned a new sport called paddle upright surfing.
The wind during my time there wasn’t sufficient for picking up kite-surfing, instead I was very happy to have progressed to the extent that I did with conventional surfing. Thailand was fun, but I don’t know if it deserves the nostalgic sense of ecstasy people seem to go into when they talk about their experiences there. Maybe I’m not young enough to enjoy it as a complete party animal, and not old enough to enjoy it for the idyllic sense of relaxation available in so many parts of the country. The Indonesian island Bali has both of these in a smaller area, so if you ever consider an exotic getaway, give this one due consideration as well.

Now I’m in France, the last stop on my itinerary. The first week I stayed in an apartment in Montmartre. I was gratified to be able to “cook” and store my own food in the apartment since, with the dollar-euro conversion being what it is these days, eating out daily was becoming an expensive prospect. I’m glad to be joined now by one close family member, and we’re visiting Paris, northeastern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and northwestern France around Strasbourg together.

After getting to practice yapping on so many itinerant French in recent travels, communicating in the language has become easy here. Today I found myself missing the adventure in China of communicating over the course of daily activities, trying to form sentences in poorly-toned Chinese, like in the grocery store: Wo yao na ge dong xi, yong chi chi fan. (lit. I need that thing, used for eating food) spoken while I make a pinching motion. And so I get led to chopsticks, and I learn, kuai zi. And then to make it easier to eat rice, Yao ying guo de kuai zi (I need ‘English chopsticks’) and now I have a fork! As far as languages go, Chinese is definitely my next focus, especially for business. Although I think I’ll be learning characters for the rest of my life . . .

With the end of travels in sight, I find myself spending most of my time moving forward with the next steps of my life and career. Soon, this blog (being a travel blog after all) will by all rights come to an end. Going forward though, I will treat it as a medium to update folks, wherever I am, (even home!), in order to describe new experiences and my reflections. If you don’t already get “push” notifications by email or otherwise of updates to the blog, email me and I’ll add you to the update list. Should you choose to tune out completely (and who could blame, given the frequency of updates!), it’s been very fulfilling to post my experiences and thoughts. Perhaps you’ve been enticed to wonder about the world some more, or just to hit the beach. Either would justify my purpose in posting. The travels have been meaningful to me on approximately twenty thousand different levels, and I hope some of that has rubbed off. If via this medium you’ve been accompanying me, I thank you.