During one of our recent garage sales, I spoke with a neighbour, who seemed thrilled about our upcoming trip. He suggested, we should contact some travel publications and offer them cooperation. I was rather skeptical, as quite frankly, I don’t see how this endeavor can be very exciting for anyone, but us. It’s not original, as thousands of families do it every day. Our destinations are not very exotic – after all, we’ll be spending much of our Sabbatical in Mexico, Belize, Cost Rica – those are popular vacation spots for many Americans.
Except, we’re not Americans. Well, technically we are – we became citizens in 2010 and will be traveling using US passports. However, we were not born and raised in this country. Therefore our point of view is often different from most of our friends. The difference was more obvious nine years ago, when we just arrived here and everything was new and unfamiliar. Over the years we got accustomed, understood, or simply started to ignore things that first seemed weird and bizarre. I think we’ve adapted pretty well. If we want to make this blog sound interesting, we’ll need to go back in time and “unlearn” all that and provide a new perspective on the American way of life. A Polish perspective maybe…?
Except, we’re not much Polish anymore. After living abroad for almost third of our lifes, our perspective isn’t the same as our friends and Family who stayed in Poland. Quite frankly, last time we visited our hometown, it didn’t feel the same at all. Same people, same buildings, and yet everything felt different, less familiar, almost… foreign? We perceive the city and people as being different, and in fact they’ve changed. But so did we.
So can we really offer a fresh perspective…? A view interesting enough to keep visitors coming back for more…? I don’t know. Time will tell.
My real goal is to keep this blog updated regulary to allow our friends and Family to stay in touch and to log our memories for those long winter days of our retirement. Written word, even in this electronic age, has much longer life expectancy then tales repeated verbally. Even if it does not have the same appeal. I remember, as a young boy I loved to listen to my Parents stories of their vacation adventure. There were only a few of them, so I’ve heard each repeated countless times at various parties. My Parents have a true talent for storytelling. The same talent, my wife inherited from her Parents. The same talent my kids will hopefully inherit from their Mom. I’m the odd one. I’m a geek. Unfortunately not gifted enough to invent another Facebook, socially challenged nonetheless…
I hope you’ll like our stories. We’ll keep’em coming. Agnieszka promised to chip in with some brilliant jokes and culinary advice to liven it up a bit. You won’t see updates on a daily basis, we don’t want to set your expectations too high. We hope to be less psychoanalytical and more funny in the future. We just can’t wait to start blogging about the real adventures…!