Our new adventure- moving from an apartment in Hawaii to a backpack in South America

Grad school came to a close, just as quickly as it began. Two short years ago, I dashed into Honolulu, swooping in off of a five month adventure in Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East. Mark and I arrived just days before my MBA orientation. My departure from the program was similarly scheduled. I crammed my final papers and presentations into the last week of classes and wrapped up the requirements of my program just 24 hours before we left town. I skipped the graduation ceremony, but attended Shidler's Business Night to accept an award for Shidler's 2013 Outstanding MBA. It was a fulfilling way to end two years of learning, friendship, hard work, and anxiety.

Our final weekend in Honolulu was spent packing up our one bedroom apartment and stacking it neatly into a 5x10 storage unit. As we stared at our many things, we marveled at the changes we had undergone during our two years in Hawaii. We had arrived like immigrants with just three backpacks each. We slept on a 4x5 section of a stranger's living room, living for 3 days on the generosity of our friend, An's, couch-surfing kindness, and two years later we had accumulated a wealth of possessions: a couch for guests of our own, a table and chair set for doing homework, a Tempurpedic mattress to sleep on, and a moped to cruise all over town on. Despite our cache, we left with only two backpacks each. We were ready to watch it happen again. We were ready to embrace the unknown and rest in the knowledge that God provides and often surprises us with more than we could ever ask for.

As we left, Mark and I joked that it takes a village for us to travel, and it's kind of true. My Marketing Research team allowed me to submit my sections early and they wrapped up the final paper after Mark and I left town. Mark's folks lent us their address and agreed to collect our mail for the summer. My folks accepted ship-ahead packages like Mark's passport, my eye drops, and graduation/grandparent leis that were too bulky to fit in our travel packs. Pueo offered to look after our car for the summer, and Kenny agreed to share his driveway with Mark's motorcycle. Truly, without friends and family, I'm not sure how we'd live our dreams. We're so grateful for everyone's support.

So, we're heading down the road to our next adventure. This adventure consists of two and a half months of backpacking through South America. We'll fly in to Argentina, then backpack north through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, bringing my number of countries traveled to 35. To prepare for the trip, we geared up with smaller packs and started reclaiming Spanish as our second language. I started to believe I was semi-fluent until I attempted to initiate a conversation with an Ecuadorian family at Spam Jam. As much as I'd love to claim that I crushed it with my conversational Spanish, I'm pretty sure my Spanglish pantomime routine was on par with a sputtering two year old. Even so, the family invited us to visit them in Quito. I'm not too sure what we'll talk about when we get there. Apparently, I've got some more learning to do, and frankly, it's pretty darn exciting to think that my formal education is complete, but there's still so much more to learn.

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