Our Journey to France Begins!

For many of you, we apologize for missing holiday cards but we were waiting to share our news. First, and most importantly, Mike continues to be healthy and had a clean cancer scan in December. I turned 50 this year - how did that happen?! And suddenly, there seems to be more aches and pains, but all-in-all we're both healthy and happy. Plus, Mike is retiring at the end of March. He's had an excellent career with the City of Annapolis and is ready for something new.

And that's our big news. We're moving to France for ten months! We'll take the last two months to hop-skip-and-jump our way around the world to return home. Needless to say, we are very excited. This is our dream adventure and one that we've been saving for over many years. We leave on March 29 for Europe. Wow.

We've rented a house in the village of Cotignac in southern France about half way between Nice and Marseilles and an hour north of the coast. It's a small, charming hill town in Provence's Var region. The town is surrounded by vineyards with olive trees and lavender sprinkled in. It looks like a Cezanne painting.

We're starting to pack (how do you pack for a year?) and look for renters for our home in Annapolis. It's hard to think about leaving our lovely home - but, we'll adjust! We're planning to relax, travel and enjoy the company of each other and our family and friends who visit. I've been studying French and after several years can say that I'm "basic". Turns out, it's not ideal to BEGIN a new language in your late 40's. C'est tres dificile! (And where do you get French characters for the computer?)

Our plans so far include traveling through the Black Forest of Germany, southern Spain, hiking in the Swiss Alps, the horse race (Palio) in Siena, Aida in Verona, a trip through Austria and Greece. And, of course, we'll travel around France and try to stay open to whatever may happen. On our way home, we're considering stops in Egypt, the Orient Express through Malaysia, New Zealand and South America...but that's a long way off, so we'll see what happens.

While Mike has retired, I received a leave of absence from my job. I feel very fortunate to have supportive leadership who will allow me to take this time away. Mike and I did not want to delay the trip any further but rather take advantage of our good health now. If all goes well, after our year abroad, I'll return to my current position with the government.

And so it begins. Our time to discover each other and learn more about who we are when we're not surrounded by the rest of life. Mike and I wrote about what "success" looks like for our time away. We each came up with different things but all of them point to time together, flexibilty, reflection, writing, sprituality, creativity with a little adventure thrown in. We'll write frequent updates and post some photos. Come along and join us on our journey!