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Back In the US of A

Hi. I haven't updated myself in a few weeks and I am choosing to blame it on my return to these United States of America. Things are different, but not that much different.

Have you ever moved? More, have you ever moved back to a place you previously lived? It's a weird experience and it's hard to describe, but if you've done it, I'll see if what I'm feeling matches up with what you felt.

Somehow, some way, it feels like we were never gone. Over the span of September 3, 2014 until June 3 2015, Jenna and I took about 9,000 photos. We took those photos in 16 countries, although it was primarily in Italy, where we visited 18 out of 20 provinces. We interacted with native speakers of approximately 20 languages and countless dialects. Thanks to the Eurozone we only dealt in four currencies.

By plane, train, and 3-times-rented-car (but not counting work-commutes and travel within Milan) we traveled an approximate 32,000 miles. Add in distance walked and you have another 2,000+ as we averaged walking about seven miles per day over 9 months.We saw (allegedly) the oldest man-made structure on Earth. We saw the largest brick dome ever constructed - and it was constructed over 500 years ago. We saw the largest concrete dome ever constructed - and it was constructed nearly 2000 years ago.

We visited 18 UNESCO World Heritage sites in non-Italy countries and an additional 22 in Italy (plus seven more on the tentative list of Italian UNESCO sites).

We visited three micronations, although only one is recognized internationally. The three are Vatican City, Uzupis, and Kugelmugel.

We saw current and former royal palaces in Milan, Rome, Torino, Naples, Venice, Caserta, Catania, Brescia, Verona, Vienna, southern Germany, Nice, Madrid, Lake Maggiore, Como, Florence, Vilnius, Bellinzona, Avio, Bergamo, Pisa, Amsterdam, and Prague.

We saw the statue of David, The Last Supper, the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the Guernica, the Pieta, and countless works by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Monet, Bernini, and all of the Ninja Turtles.

Depending on your list, we've generally been to at least five of the ten most famous churches in the world: Notre Dame, St Paul's, Westminster Abbey, St. Peter's, the Florence and Milan Cathedrals (my two personal favorites, for what it's worth), St. Mark's in Venice, and lots of others.

We also ate gelato an approximate 80 times, swam in the Mediterranean Sea, skinny-dipped in a mountain-stream in the Swiss Alps, jumped through canyons, skied in the Austrian Alps, rode giant scooters down a mountain bike course, and between the two of us, gained and lost a total of about 70 pounds (bi-monthly 10-pound swings, roughly).

What I'm getting at is that we had a pretty good year. But now that we're back, we're back. Life has continued, as we expected it would. We don't dwell on how we ought to be going to Barcelona instead of Wal-Mart. We don't obsess over everything we did and whine about what we didn't get to do. We don't sit down every day and think about how different things have become, because we're just dealing with how things are right now.

That's all you can do as a human - deal with things how they are right now. You can't change the past and you sure as hell can't see the future, so you'd better do your best to focus on what's right in front of you right now, because that's all you have.

With that in mind, do whatever makes you happy. Especially if what makes you happy is going to Europe for nine months.

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