November & December 2023: The End Again
It’s hard to believe another year has passed. Again. Here I am sitting at my sister’s kitchen table writing this end-of-year newsletter. Again. Last year at this time I had just come back from one year in Argentina. This year it is strange to say that I actually spent the majority of the year in the United States. Something quite strange for me. But if I’m being honest, I’ve enjoyed being back here more this time than I have in the past few decades.
I worked at a brewery. I made new friends. I reconnected with old friends. I created new connections with new people. I saw my family a lot. And I stayed in one place for an entire 6 months, which is more than I’ve stayed in one place for years. It was nice. I bought the big laundry detergent because I knew I would use it. I didn’t have to do a time-cost analysis on everything I bought.
There are lots of fun things about December and the end of the year. One of them is to look back on the year and realize how much you have done. It’s easy to forget how much has happened as each day passes by. But when you look back at the year as a whole, it’s hard not to feel proud.
A 2023 Recap
I bookended the year with self-publishing goals. In January of this year, I published BUENOS AIRES: A Traveler’s Companion to Argentina’s Capital City. I’ve had a great response from it, and I send a deep thank you to everyone who has purchased that travel guide over the past year.
In December, I published a children’s book along with a good friend from university. My friend Meg wrote this sweet story about a fox named Finley with her daughter, and I was the illustrator. This was a slow-moving project that took nearly 3 full years from the time we first talked about it to the point of publishing. It was a very proud moment to hold a physical copy of A Home for Finley the Fox in my hands after years of working on it digitally.
This year I became an aunt to a perfect baby named Amelia, and a Taylor Swift-obsessed 9-year-old, Ari.
I started offering travel consultations earlier this year, and have already done over 30 consultations; this means that I have met over 30 amazing people and their families who have trusted me to help them make decisions about their holiday, long-term stay, or huge move to Argentina. I have loved being part of their journeys.
I spent two months in Mexico and got to catch up with some old friends and make many new friends along the way. I spent a week in Puerto Rico at WITS (Women in Travel Summit) and met a ton of inspiring women travelers.
I spent two months traveling around the US seeing some of my oldest and dearest friends.
I started making money from my travel blog, which was a big goal of mine this year. It’s not much just yet, but it’s something. And that’s something to feel proud of. I have a lot of hope for the upcoming year in that department (more on that soon).
I spent a ton of time in nature this year, hiking in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
I reached over 7500 subs on my YouTube channel, while also making the big decision to quit YouTube. At least for now. Maybe I’ll come back to it one day if I live in one place again. But for me, trying to make YouTube videos while traveling robs me of everything I love about traveling. Reading the comments on my YouTube videos also robs me of my sanity, so I’ve quit doing that as well. If you’ve left a comment and I never responded, I’m sorry (not sorry), but I stopped reading comments months ago.
A 2024 Preview
I’ll be spending the next two weeks in California, between San Jose and San Diego, visiting family. But come early January, I’m off again.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent two years living in Florence, Italy where I studied graphic design and did a one-year artist residency. Now, after four years, I’m finally going back. I’m planning to spend 10 days drinking red wine, having aperitivo for dinner, walking by the Duomo, and laughing with all my friends who I haven’t seen for years, but missed dearly.
After Italy, I’m catching a flight to Cairo with a layover in Barcelona, where I’ll meet up with my number 1 travel buddy, Art from Gringo Nation. Art and I plan to spend nearly a month in Egypt seeing the famous pyramids of Giza, gazing at the Nile, and sunbathing next to the Red Sea. From there, we’ll hop back on a plane and head to Tunisia for another month. These are two countries I’ve never been to, but I’m super excited to see them.
Art will be posting on his YouTube channel throughout this journey, so feel free to follow along there. I will unlikely be YouTubing during this time but I will absolutely be posting on Instagram and my blog if you’re keen to see what we get up to.
After Tunisia, who knows!? Algeria? Albania? Sri Lanka? Back to the US? Back to Argentina?
ARGENTINA TOURS WITH TROVA TRIP
I do genuinely miss Argentina and I do really want to get back there, the sooner the better. There is still so much to discover that I haven’t seen yet. More than anything, I would love to do a group trip there in 2024.
There is a company called Trova Trip that helps organize group trips as long as I can get people to fill out a survey to prove interest. If you have 5-10 minutes to spare, I would be so grateful if you could fill out this survey. Even if you don’t know for sure, or you don’t fully intend to take the trip, just getting the survey filled out is a huge help to me. The more surveys, the better.
In order for the survey to be considered valid, you just need to select that you are willing to spend over $2000 on a trip. You can select any countries that you might be interested in for a trip. But of course, the more people who also select Argentina, the more likely it will be that we can take a Patagonia hiking trip together. THANK YOU!
Save Yourself a Headache and Get Insured
As I prepare to travel again soon, I am of course thinking of travel medical insurance. The company that I always use is SafetyWing. They have the best coverage and you can start and end the insurance coverage at any time. You can even start a new plan after you’ve already started traveling. It’s a travel medical insurance company that was created by nomads for nomads. So if you too are thinking of traveling soon, consider SafetyWing coverage for your next adventure.
THANK YOU
As always, thank you to all of you who support me and my work. Thank you for reading my words and watching my videos. Buying me coffee and donating to my blog. I truly appreciate all your continued support and encouragement.
The next time we talk, I’ll be on another continent!