Change of Plans
by Jenn Lopez
It’s difficult to believe that it has already been a year since we left on the biggest trip of our lives… thus far… I’m not counting out other trips yet :p It was only the other day when we noticed we’re finally starting to settle into a routine again. At eight weeks, this is officially the longest we’ve stayed anywhere in the last year. It’s a weird sensation that I’m not sure I want to get used to but when we moved to Calgary, AB, we knew we’d be here a while. How long is a while? Good question. But like I mentioned above, we’ve been here 8 weeks, have signed a year lease on a place and are finally starting to settle in; so ya know, baby steps.
Nora is in a bunch of different activities, making friends, and loving life. We’ve been fortunate enough to have some good friends in the city and have already seen a few. It’s a completely different life than what we’ve been living. Even when we got back to Canada, we didn’t have a home of our own and were still in a transition phase until we got into this place we now call home.
Looking back, holy we saw some amazing things. It’s crazy to look at photos and remember the sites, sounds, and smells of the different places. It’s still so fresh in our minds.
I don’t know if anyone remembered that originally this was supposed to be a 9 month trip, but we were back in Canada three weeks earlier than we had originally planned. Not that that saved us from having to stay in more airbnbs, but the early end to our trip was partially my doing and partially circumstance.
When you have a chronic illness and migraines to boot, and have no real method of pain management while on the road, it can become too much. There were points in this trip where the pain was too much. Thankfully wine was cheaper than water in most of Europe and thankfully I did bring migraine medication for when they flared up, but eventually I had to give in to the fact that I couldn’t continue. I couldn’t go through it all in pain again. I remember having that conversation with Edgar. It was the one of those times that I was certain of something and had to be firm about it. It was a hard pill for our family to swallow but I needed to get back to where I knew the pain medications, and I had medical care.
That was one of the reasons the trip ended early. The other was a combination of high season creeping upon us and with that the cost and availability of accommodation, as well as the sheer exhaustion we all felt from traveling for that amount of time… It all became too much to manage so our plans changed. We were still able to visit beautiful Scotland, but unfortunately not for as long as we wanted. That’s when it started to hit home. We had been in various places for months at a time. You’d think you’d get to know a place in a month, and get to see all the things but while you do see the main attractions, you also realize how much more there is to see and do. A month simply wasn’t enough time.
Travel often opens up a world of possibility, of inspiration, and of beauty. I didn’t want all of those wonderful things to fall out of our lives because my body couldn’t cope with being on the road that long but cutting our trip short wasn’t the end of the world. It was simply a change of plans.
Plans change based on all kinds of things, and even on this trip, we’ve changed our plans plenty of times. We hadn’t originally planned on going to Greece and it was such a beautiful place and wonderful time for us. The stories we have from just that one month are some of the funniest and amazing memories.
I have to remind myself that just because we are back and living in a more stable environment, doesn’t mean our travel days are over. It just means that that one trip was a once in a lifetime kinda trip. Up until last year, we hadn’t done anything like that and of course there’s a learning curve to everything in life. I’m so very proud of my family for having the ambition and courage to do what we did. It was such a learning experience for all of us.
Together we figured out that, while we love to travel, a month is between too long and too short. Various lessons were learned, but first and foremost, this one was the biggest. We’d rather be on vacation mode for a few weeks and be able to explore everyday and experience everything we can, knowing that we’re in vacation mode. Or we’d rather stay a couple of months and live life. By the time the third week rolled around, we’d just getting the hang of living in a place, when we’d have to get ready to leave and start again.
We also discovered that if we did go for a month at a time again, we’d like to have breaks in between. Being able to come home and give our minds and body’s a break would have been awesome. We would have also been able to collect more souvenirs from our travels if we were able to come home more frequently.
The wish list and lessons learned that come after an experience is always great to move forward with, but make no mistake, those months on the road, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. It was such a different life experience for all of us, and such a learning experience. We learned about language, culture, ourselves, and our family. We were given circumstances we’d never experience in our regular, stable lives.
At the end of the day, no matter how much planning anybody does, plans usually change, and that’s not always a bad thing. I think even though we had to end our trip early, we ended it on a high note. Scotland was magical.
This experience has shaped me and my family in the best way I think something hard and magical can. If your soul is tired, try something new. Anything. It doesn’t have to be something crazy like what we did, but make no mistake, if we can do it, you could too, if you so desire. Go wherever you can for however long you can, and make memories along the way.
The destination isn’t really the important thing; it’s the journey and who you journey with. You won’t ever regret living your life, you’ll regret your life passing you by while you were doing what you were supposed to. Be mindful about all the beauty in your life, and live your life. You die only once, but you get to live everyday. Like Nora says “Life’s an adventure!”