The time zones they are a changin’

We’re in Japan! Santa comes here first!

Ten days and three countries and about six lifetimes ago, Ellie and I met up with a friend from Middlebury in Ninh Binh, Vietnam. If you want to pronounce it like the locals, do your best impression of the cartoon character Road Runner, but bring it down an octave. Grace had been traveling solo, and we’d last seen her on our second night of our trip in Chiang Mai. We had a blast swapping stories about everything we’d been up to since, and if we’re being honest, talking to literally anyone else was a real gift (I’m still not over Ellie calling me a brown noser, even if I know she’s right).

As one does when traveling, we talked about traveling. We told Grace about riding a bus so crammed we had to signal a touchdown just to scooch into our seats. She told us about joining a motorcycle peloton 150 people strong. But we also talked about traveling in the abstract, about how commonplace it is for Europeans and Israelis to hit the road for months on end, and about how when most Americans set their lives aside for even a few weeks, people assume—not always incorrectly—that they’re on a journey of transformation, or escape.

So I asked Grace if she felt like the trip had changed her at all.

“Nope,” she said.

Ellie and I concurred, and we all agreed that while traveling can certainly tilt your perspectives and open your mind and heart to questions you may not have known to ask, it might be a good thing if it doesn’t totally change who you are.

Now, I might be laughing at these words in several months from an off-the-grid yurt, but for now, in fact especially now, we’re both feeling really lucky to have the families and friends and lives we’ll return to, and for the sense of who we are—30, flirty, and thriving—we’ve brought along.

And maybe traveling has changed us, after all. For starters, while Ellie hasn’t shaved her legs in weeks (nothing new), I’ve shaved my face twice in the last six days! And if that’s a sign of a deeper rift in our personalities, only friends and family will be able to tell. Which is why it’s definitely a good thing that we’re on a Shinkansen (bullet train) speeding away from Kyoto, towards Tokyo and the awaiting Carey family. We’ll spend the first night of Hanukkah, and yes, Christmas, in the big city before we all jet north to Hokkaido. There we’ll join forces with my brother Greg and some pals from school and from Philly for several weeks of skiing. If there’s anything on this trip that’s going to tempt us to throw these words and everything else away, it’s the 281 centimeters of snow Niseko United has gotten so far this winter. Here’s hoping the getting is good, but not so good we never leave, in which case we won’t be able to say we’re still ‘mooning.

PS: I know you probably have lots of questions like, “What was Kyoto like?” “Is it true Ellie spent 36 straight hours in a hotel room in Taiwan?” “Wait, you were in Taiwan? How was it?” “Can you provide any actual details about your experiences?” or “Can Ellie write these from now on, please?”

To those I say, fair. Like the trains in Japan never are, we’re running a tad behind. We’ve got lots of notes and will be sending an actual update soon, but for now, the train is slowing down and the NORAD Santa Tracker is draining my phone battery. So Happy Holidays! Here are some pictures.