We are living the dream! Except for humanity.
Our RV is parked in a church parking lot in Lake Charles, LA. We did hurricane cleanup here just over a year ago, and they've asked us to come back and volunteer more. We returned wholeheartedly. They've given us free parking, free electricity and an office in the building as well as their friendship. This is a wonderful community and the opportunity to volunteer full time is just what we wanted retirement to be. This week we are mudding and sanding walls, and helping a family move.
The last few years have been peculiar for us as nomads. During 2020 and 2021 we traveled in 21 different states. Most places were delighted to have tourists/visitors show up because Covid had slowed their guests to such a trickle. Very few places were masked, except in their stores. Probably they could have done with a bit more.
The only place that we felt was over the top about Covid was Ann Arbor, oddly, where the whole town seemed to be wrapped in plastic and trying to out-safety each other. My 11yo remarked that that their public library - where no one could enter or touch the books and the librarians would only speak to you through a screen, and which additionally smelled strongly of Lysol - was strsight out of a science fiction novel. That establishment was not an outlier, as it turned out. We all drove away wondering what in hell goes on in Ann Arbor.September 1 through December 1 2021 we went to Greece. So beautiful! A few of our favorite pics:
The flight into Crete (I snapped that out the plane window)
The backyard of one of our Airbnbs
A scenic overlook on Corfu
The ruins at Phillipi
Me on a rooftop on Hydra, an island with no cars
We'd been to Europe several times, but never to Greece. We'd intended to volunteer with 3 different organizations while there. All 3 had stopped work though because of the virus. And no two airports in Greece had the same set of standards for boarding planes. Flying from one island to another was a major headache every time, not because we didn't have our papers in order, but because whatever the government web site had told us to do to prepare, the airline insisted on something different, and it changed weekly.
There were Covid strikes too. The night we left Thessaloniki, there were riots complete with tear gas and water cannons because the government was imposing shots on teachers and health care workers. While in Paralio Astros, there was a restaurant strike because the government said non-tourists who hadn't been vaccinated could no longer do outdoor dining at restaurants (they'd already been banned from indoor). Since in small Greek towns that's nearly all of a restaurant's patrons, the restaurants all shut down.
We met so many amazing Greek people, made friends we still chat with and had lots of adventures. I wish we could have gotten to know everybody without all this stress, though. We want very much to go back to Europe once Covid is over.
Now that we're back stateside and the holidays are over, I am trying to refocus on two things specifically: physical health and spiritual integrity.
WRT the former, I have refocused the family on healthy eating to the best of my ability, although my husband still shows up with bags of Doritos in spite of my filling the fridge with washed and precut vegetables. You can lead a horse to water, but you cant force-feed him celery. Separately, we have two engaged sons, and each of their fiancées has asked me for a cookbook of my recipes as a wedding gift. But many of my recipes are not even written down. I just do what I remember my grandmother doing. I am now putting everything down for them.
Spiritual integrity...
We are practicing Christians, volunteering at a church. But I still question everything I do. Does it align with my values, is it an accurate reflection of Who I Am. I'm certain my life more closely aligns with my beliefs than at any earlier point, but that nagging "is this right?" never leaves me. It's as if I believe every day is a test, and if my beliefs, words and actions are even fractionally out of alignment, I fail. I've never heard of someone feeling Imposter Syndrome as a member of a faith, but I suppose it's possible. My husband says I feel this way because I have too much time on my hands. I suspect he's partially correct. If anything is a luxury belief, insufficiency of spiritual integrity strikes me as one. People fighting for physical or career survival would never navel-gaze about this sort of purity. So I may be an idiot about this.
Still, it's there.
