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CURRENTLY VISITING HAWAII!!

Hawaii

Hawaii
Akaka Falls

See the World for Free

The idea here is to TRAVEL THE WORLD regardless of time or budget. It dawned on me one day that even if I had unlimited time and money (which I definitley do not), I still couldn't see everything in the world that I'd like to see--I'm simply not going to live long enough to do it.

But I had a bit of brain wave and soon after the travel envelope was born. This is an actual physical envelope. I typed the name of every country in the world, plus every state in the US on little slips of paper which I then put into the envelope. In the beginning we (myself, my husband, Dave and daugher Catherine) would draw out a slip at random at the beginning of the month and that's where we would go---at least in our minds. We grab some books about the country from the library and put them in our bathroom to look at. We also check out some videos about the country if any. We check it out on googleearth, listen to the music, try the food, maybe even attempt to learn a dance or celebrate a festival.

After the first two years we discovered that even virtual traveling can be tiring, so we travel now whenever I happen to be in the mood.

It's great fun. I especially love it when people I meet have been to the place I'm "visiting" in real life, or get excited and have some virtual adventures of their own. I hope that anyone who comes across this blog will feel welcome to come with us on the trip!



You have a standing reservation to see it all!

Feb 3, 2010

Turkey July 2009

Turkey was a virtual trip for me and Dave, but Catherine actually got to spend two weeks there for free! She was selected to go as part of a group invited by the Turkish Department of Education in a program called, “Teaching Tolerance through English.” As it happened we got back from Mexico on Monday (where she came down with the flu—probably the swine flu) and she was due to leave for Turkey on Friday morning. Thanks to Tamiflu she was able to stagger onto the plane.


Knowing virtually nothing about Turkey, other than that it borders on Iran. We were at first a little hesitant about the trip. No need. Turns out Turkey is a vacation paradise with the Mediterranean Sea and all kinds of fascinating places to explore. Catherine was housed in a school in the town of Canakale. Her room came complete with Smurfs on the walls—so much for the mystique of the Orient.

We have GOT to all go to Turkey someday. The street vendors and the spice market look fantastic. There’s the blue mosque in Istanbul (which is half European and half Asian), plus there are whole ancient underground cities. Catherine got to see some neat stuff, like the Trojan horse (Brad Pitt wasn’t there though), but the group she was with was too large to see everything she would have liked. And we went about crazy because there were problems with the internet connections and the phone at the school so we hardly heard from her at all.

To ease our extreme jealousy she brought us spices, Turkish delight, official protection from the evil-eye (handy!), and a gorgeous little lamp—not magic, but pretty just the same.

Definitely we have to go to Turkey in real life.
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