2013: The Year of Travel

One of the awesome things about the Foreign Service is the travel. Not just traveling to the place you live, but somehow feeling like, since you live abroad already, you might as well travel all the damn time. Before moving to Russia, a six hour flight felt interminable. Now, a six hour flight sounds like a piece of cake. $500 for a plane ticket used to seem like a total rip-off. Now, it's a bargain. Fortunately, not only does the Foreign Service give you a lot of vacation time (around 20 days a year I think?), but you also get all American holidays and local holidays, which makes for a crap-ton of holidays. And the pay is pretty sweet too.

So, what's on the books for 2013? I'll tell you:
February: Paris and Istanbul
March: Moscow and St. Petersburg
April: not sure, but probably somewhere we can get to from Moscow, since we'll be living there for a month (another story for another time)
May: Amsterdam
June: Cali for John, not sure yet for me
October: Toronto
November: Disney World

And that's just what we know as of right now, mid-January. I plan on getting to Prague at some point, and we'd really like to go to Dubai since it's a direct flight. Thailand, Spain, and Italy are also possibilities. Maybe even Morocco. Who knows? If anyone wants to meet us somewhere, let us know! We are travelin' fools this year! (Did I mention we somehow got United 1K? Yeah, we're taking advantage of that sucker for the brief time it lasts.)

By the time this year is over, I plan on having a whole lot of stamps in my passport. And if we're lucky, Jack will get so used to airplanes he'll actually learn to sleep on them! A girl can dream, right?