Miss me?

Sigh. That’s a happy sigh, in case you’re wondering.

I’m back. We’re all back, actually. The apartment is overflowing with life and full of noise. Constant beeps from the microwave or the fridge. The background noise of tv. Laughter, playful bickering has been restored. And I can breathe easy.

You guys, this summer was amazing. It was breathtaking and exciting and all around memorable. When we booked a trip that spanned over three countries in four weeks, Robert immediately told us we were crazy. My fellow teachers told me we were crazy. I started to think it was crazy… Four weeks without my funny dog and shopping bear bed spread? INSANE. What it ended up being was insanely genius. The four weeks allowed us to take our time, take a day for reading in bed with air conditioning and the TV blasting if we needed it (which we sometimes did). We didn’t feel guilty for sleeping in or scheduling an impromptu day dedicated to shopping or shuffling things around at the last minute.

But let’s start at the beginning. Back when I barely knew Emma and she barely knew me. To me, she was the cute British girl that my boyfriend had taken an interest in (“She works in Iruma! She’s normal! She has an accent! She’s really nice! She’s sweet! I’m going to help her order a chair! She’s really nice!”). And to her, I was some random California girl living with two boys. To see what all the fuss was about, we met up over donuts one fateful day. We ended up spending three hours discussing the glory of deep fried food and the fact that corn IS a vegetable (and the BEST vegetable at that). We bonded over a deep seeded FRIENDS obsession (which was and continues to be a vehicle for hour long discussions), and ended on our love for travel and the need to go somewhere, anywhere this summer. That was all I needed to hear before forcing her to commit to being my travel partner. She really had no choice. “You want to travel? I want to travel! Sweet, let’s travel together!! And now just sign your name on the dotted line…”  Me: queen of awkward moments.

Much like living together, I think traveling is something that either makes or breaks friendships. A lot of unexpected things happen when you travel, and how you handle those situations will tell you a lot about a person. Needless to say, traveling with Emma MADE our friendship. She took a 20 minute train the other day so we could hang out because apparently, we don’t know how to function without each other after spending four weeks together.

I don’t know if all this rambling has a point except for the fact that Emma and I? We rock at traveling through Southeast Asia. On the second day of our trip, I turned to her and said “Uh my stomach is really sore… I have no idea why.” It wasn’t until I was rolling on the floor with laughter that I also yelped in pain. We laughed. All the freaking time. Things that made my blood boil and brewed a crazy hyped up rage-storm, Emma simply threw up her shoulders like “Well, what are you gonna do?” She would say something British and sarcastic and make me laugh…Hurricane Jaquielyn avoided.

It will take a while to blog the past four weeks, but it is definitely something I feel the need to do. If not for my six readers, than for me. To remember forever (unless I eventually delete and destroy this blog, like I did with my last blog. Yes, I regret it).

So I leave you with a sneak peek of our awesome times… and a video. Of Eunice.

We had good times.