Hello World!

My stomach is all tied up in a big knot. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m car sick from playing chicken with the cars in the other lane, the cigarette smoke, the ant farm I’m sitting in, or just because I’m not sure if we’re going to ever make it to the lake. We’re not getting robbed, it’s going to be fine. What if we are? Do I give up easily? Do you think we can run for it? No, really, it’s fine I keep telling myself, you’ve watched too many movies. Everything is going to be fine if we can just make it to the lake. I check my google maps, still going in the opposite direction. Let’s refresh our location, maybe it’s not right. Nope, still five hours away. Deep breaths, just close your eyes. I’m sure this is normal, right? If only our driver spoke a little more English. You’re just hungry and car sick, that’s all it is. You know how easily you get car sick. Largest volcanic lake in the world, jungle trek to see Orangutans, it’s all going to be worth it. It’s just one car ride. Once you get there, it will just be a funny story to look back on. Maybe if I keep telling myself that, it will happen. Positive thoughts, right? People think positive thoughts for parking spots and they supposedly get them. Positive thoughts…we’re making it to Lake Toba!!

Now fast forward to right now, I’m staring at an almost blank screen with the cursor blinking back and forth, taunting me. Just a friendly reminder of how much time I’ve wasted staring at my computer screen. Thanks Microsoft Word, at least the paper clip guy isn’t creepily smiling at me. The question I keep asking myself is, “Why would anyone care about what you’re doing or what you have to say?” People watch cats ringing bells for food, a weird talking orange, and a kid crying about getting his finger bit. People care about strange things. I don’t have anything too special to share, just more an opportunity to explain my journey. A very small experience in the last year was a single car ride to Lake Toba. Nothing you’ll be able to understand by seeing my beautiful photo of the lake, just a memorable moment in time. It’s almost the modern-day journal. Typing instead of writing, publishing for the world to see instead using a lock and key. We have social media “stories” with gifs, videos, boomerangs and bunny ears. This is my story, but with good old fashion words. This will be about my journey moving all the way to the other side of the world. I will talk about traveling, but I won’t be a crazy travel blogger that’s been living on the road for 3 years straight, going country to country. I will write about food, fitness, and whatever else I want, but I’m not an incredible chef, nor am I crazy fit (still working on getting good quality push-ups down). Think of my blog as reading about your regular ass friend, who went on a cool trip. My hope is you’ll enjoy reading this because I’m just like you, a regular human deciding to adventure out of my comfort zone. Instead of just seeing the beautiful photo of the lake, why not read about all the things a photo can’t show you? The story.

Now here’s how my story starts. I moved to Singapore from Portland, Oregon at the beginning of the year.  Crazy right? Maybe not for some of you, but it was for me. I had never even moved out of the state of Oregon as an adult. Before last year, I honestly couldn’t point on the map exactly where Singapore was, and if you were to ask me what the main language was, I wouldn’t have known. Overall I would consider myself to be a smart person, but you can feel dumb pretty fast when there is so much about the world we have no clue about. Now when someone asks me, “Can’t you get a job teaching English in Singapore?” I must stifle my judgments and remind myself that I didn’t know much about this place till I moved here.

We are so easy to get stuck in our bubble, surrounding ourselves with the same types of people, same experiences, same friends, same foods, same everything. It’s EASY to be comfortable and not push out of our comfort zone. It’s easy to never leave our bubble, never question our views, never stretch our goals or make goals at all, life can be easy if we want it to. The decision to move across the world wasn’t easy. This pushed me and my husband out of our comfort zones, and I never want to look back. Regardless of who you are, I hope IF you continue to read my rants, you will be inspired to push yourself out of your comfort zone. This year for me has been full of fun, new incredible experiences, and it’s all because I said yes to the first one. Do yourself a favor, and let’s get a little uncomfortable, shall we?