UPDATE: Stopping Home in the United States for a Break

Approaching Milwaukee from Lake Michigan… Home sweet home!

Hanging out at a wedding in Brainerd, Minnesota

It sounds pretty weird to say it, but it is possible to need a vacation from a vacation.  Eight months into our career break trip, Alissa and I have found ourselves back home in Wisconsin for a much-desired month off.  I know what you’re thinking.  We’ve been on vacation for the last eight months, why would we need a vacation from a vacation?  While that question does hold some weight, the truth is we are pretty exhausted and have been moving pretty fast from place to place.  I mentioned in our 6-month update that our average time spent in each bed was 2.83 nights.  After eight months, we got the average up to three nights per bed, but even so we couldn’t wait to put our bags down in a familiar place and just dump everything out.

We still have some stories to post about China, so while the amount of articles on our site will go down over the next six weeks, we will still be updating the site, just not as much as in the past.  Neither of us are trained writers, so writing is just something that doesn’t come naturally to us.  This makes blogging a little more difficult and time consuming than we had hoped.  Having five weeks of time off from blogging will allow us to keep blogging consistently during the second half of our trip.  However, we will publish some thoughts on what it feels like to be back home.

Travel stats from the last eight months:

Miles Traveled: 50,121 – Enough to go around the circumference of the Earth 2 times
Countries Visited: 17 – (18 if you count a few minutes in North Korea)
Cities Visited: 55
Beds Slept In: 83
Average Nights Per Bed (ANB): 2.95 nights

Seeing family is the best part of being home

What are we doing while home?

We will be moving around a lot over the next 6 weeks, with stops in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Northern Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Green Bay.  It will be a busy time as well as we have two weddings to attend, a nephew and niece to spoil, parents and grandparents to spend time with, newborns of friends to see for the first time, brothers and sisters to catch up with, clients to strategize with, and lots of friends to drink with.  Although six weeks is a long time, we know it will go by fast, so we plan on cherishing all the time we have here, especially with family members.

One thing I did not expect was the healthcare changes. Last I heard, Obama’s health bill was getting ripped to shreds by republicans. Good thing we are only staying for 6 weeks though; otherwise I might have to look into it. I’m not sure if there are Obamacare exemptions for us considering we travel so extensively. I wonder if it will last that long. It seems like there are a lot of mixed opinions about it.

Upcoming plans

Our itinerary is still pretty solid, although we have a couple of decisions to make in the next couple of weeks.  In mid November, we will be flying to India for a 5-6 week tour of the country.  We are hoping to get multiple-entry visas for India that will also allow us the ability to spend a week in Sri Lanka as well.  From there we will head to either Ethiopia or Kenya to begin a two-month overland trip down the East coast of Africa, ending in Cape Town, South Africa.  From there we head back north to Eastern Europe, with a possible stop in Turkey.  Our Eastern Europe tour ends in Germany in May, and from there we are flying to Brazil for the World Cup in June.

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