A Very 2 Feet Wedding Part 3: Vegas, Baby

Third time's the charm, right?

We decided to really make the marriage stick and do it a third time. This time, we headed to Vegas because, why not? 

Spring Break was a perfect time to do it since we'd have a few days to enjoy the city and do fun things. 

We packed up our stuff and our two dogs and headed out in our dented Hyundai for our very first road trip together. Sure, we'd traveled extensively together, even spending over 30 hours on a train together, but this was the first time we'd been in a car by ourselves for a long time together. 

A Very 2 Feet Wedding Part 2: Houston

As you remember, we had an amazing Thai Buddhist wedding ceremony in Bangkok in June of 2015. But we have a confession...it wasn't legal.

Not that it couldn't have been, it just wasn't logical for us to do the paperwork at that time. Here's the deal.

I did a few interviews and began online training for a teaching license. I got a job in Houston and had to leave at the end of July to start training and professional development and all that super fun stuff that comes with starting a new career.

Rick, however, couldn't come with me.

A Very 2 Feet Wedding, Part 1: Thailand

When we got engaged in October of 2014, we knew we wanted a wedding that would be very "us." We also knew that this sort of wedding wasn't going to be very easy on our families, for a few reasons. We had to find neutral territory, both literally and religiously.

Ricky was raised Catholic in Ireland, and Talia was raised Mormon in the US. Neither of us have been truly practicing members of those religions for a few years and were worried about how our wedding would turn out if we went along with traditional expectations, so we really had to think strategically about the how, when, and where we would do it.

We're Baaa-aaaack!

Since it's been nearly three years since our last post, we thought we would let you know what's happened.

2 Feet got married!

We also ran a 10k in North Korea, went camping at the Great Wall, got another dog, were separated for a terrible 6 months, are currently in the US suffering through inefficient immigration red tape, have gotten our first tattoos, and are somewhat settled for the time being.

Dealing with the Side Effects of Long Term Travel: A Failure's Guide

I was in the bathroom this morning getting ready to go to the supermarket with Ricky. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and some slide-on shoes. My hair went into a ponytail, with a headband to keep back the flyaways. I slapped on some mascara and some deodorant and was ready to go.

And then it hit me.

Nothing has changed.

During the nine months we were traveling I looked pretty much the same—ponytail (when my hair was long enough), t-shirt, simple shoes, tiny bit of makeup, and looking barely presentable to go into public. 

I realized that I was living the side effects of long term travel. They are unavoidable.  Sometimes I find myself forgetting to change clothes after a couple of days.  I have to remind myself to change my shirt. I forget that I can do laundry when I want, and I have enough clothes to wear while I wait for other ones to dry.

And days like today I forget that I’m not traveling anymore and I can actually take a little bit of time to style my hair (though I’m getting close to chopping it all off again), or put on some makeup, or even make better clothing choices.

One thing that Ricky and I both suffer with as a side effect of traveling is that we’ve forgotten the value of money. We’ve used so many different currencies while constantly mentally changing it over to dollars or Euros that we forget what things are actually worth. That resulted in a lot of stupid purchases when we first got to Beijing. We spent 1200 rmb for curtains and 550 for a rug. That’s about $300 dollars that we actually needed to spend on things we, you know, need. 

And it’s a constant thing.  Our priorities are pretty messed up right now, because what we valued while we were traveling (the occasional ice cream, a nice meal to keep us sane after days of fried rice), isn’t what we should value now. We spend too much money on McDonald’s because we can, when we really don’t want to spend any more money than we have to for dog food.

Basically we are terrible people with imaginary money to burn.

 So hopefully we’ll get a handle on this real-people thing we call life and I might actually put on some make up or do something with my hair.