Hello! To those of you whom I have promised to document my travels, I am excited to say that I will be starting a travel email listserv (notably, not a blog). For my own personal internal reflection, I'll likely write something once or twice a week, and post the products of my beginning photography endeavors. My goal is to write for myself, and avoid the unavoidable pull of social media forces to think about what everyone else thinks every time I post. I quit all social media posting (aside from Strava), 3 years ago, when the pandemic began, because it made me too sad. However, I've realized that I love seeing my friends posts, and it helps me stay in touch with them when I am far away. So in an effort to keep in better contact with friends, and to provide updates about my life regularly, I'm hoping I can do it in a way that feels natural and true to myself.
I will probably not be writing that you would want to read in The New Yorker, and I am determined not to be hypercritical of my writing before I post. It will also likely be a little fractured and disparate, because that's how my mind is organized, even when I write scientific papers. Photos I share will be similarly minimally edited, because I would like to minimize my time spent on a computer.
I'll be in SE Asia and mostly Western Europe. I'm flying to Bangkok, Thailand on Monday, April 10th! From there, I'll spend a couple weeks in Thailand, before flying to Indonesia (Sumatra + Bali) + Borneo. During the first two weeks of May, I'll be in Vietnam, biking with my Mom for two weeks from Ho Chi Minh City to Nha Trang. Then, I have about 3 weeks with no plans, before I fly to Singapore for 2 weeks. From July through mid-August I'll be in Europe, likely Italy, France, and Spain.
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Since leaving San Francisco last week, I drove my cats to Helena, Montana, where I am now paying $100 per month in cat rent. While seeing India (sister) and Wyatt (sister's partner) was lovely, I white-knuckled the entire drive. As I have not driven more than 20 times in the last 6 years (a feat made possible by life as a college student and the glorious SF Bart, MUNI, Caltrain, and bicycle lifestyle), it felt like I had boarded the horizontal Tower of Terror. I will eternally have nightmares about a red Semi speeding toward me at 90 mph on a road covered in several inches of ice.
As this trip to Helena was, technically, my first stop on my world travels, I thought I could use this as my first blog post.
During this drive, I:
Felt extremely powerful and competent for driving 8 hours both ways through the snow, and simultaneously utterly alone and terrified
Planned out all the sick photo opportunities I could have had, had I actually stopped in the beautiful places I saw along and not just for 20 minutes at the gas stations
Cried several times about leaving my cats, Nymphadora and Sybil
Schemed about how I can practice my Spanish next year before I start medical school and have to take care of Spanish-speaking patients (I would love suggestions!)
Thought a lot about the word "primordial," because I heard it while listening to 1) a romantasy, 2) a dystopian novel about California's water completely drying out, and 3) an advertisement for Lagoon's new dinosaur ride, "Primordial"
Photos from SF (remarkably edited, as I was trying to figure out Lightroom): (Ty to Milo, for being my primary photo subject as I figure out how to work my camera)
And photos of the drive from Helena to Salt Lake:
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