200 Days and Counting:
Claire and I continue to be amazed by the synchronicity and coincidences that continue to appear in our lives, particularly on this trip.
So far, we have met five people with one of our birthdays (you could think this means we have common birthdays; we choose against such pessimism to believe it means we have been destined to meet these people). Add to this the fact that one was a Bollywood star and one sold us a ring on the street, and we feel that such destiny is self-evident. Self-evidently what exactly, we do not know.
Sitting in Egypt, we ran into someone who knows Lara’s dad; this felt strange because we have not met many people from the U.S. at all. To meet one from our particular sphere in the U.S. felt particularly important. To meet one from our small sphere in the U.S. during the pilgrimage back to Lara’s original hometown seemed relevant, though again, we were not quite sure how. But small world type conversations abounded.
Claire ran into one of her friends from her abroad program in Chile on the extremely crowded streets of Beijing. Again, the chances of this are small and the value of an interaction whose strangeness can be revisited again and again is immeasurable on such a long trip.
Such examples continue to come up. The most recent one being that when we did out the math to find out when exactly day 200 fell, we realized it was on our last day alone together. Tomorrow Lara’s bestest friend Kelly flies to Kenya to meet us for the last few weeks of the trip. So Claire and Lara spend their final day alone together celebrating day 200.
And what a day it is. We have cleaned things, gone running and generally pottered about getting our stuff in order for our last few week push through lots of Kenya touring and Kilimanjaro hiking. It was not a particularly festive day, but it celebrated what we do best: coping with the exhausting day-to-day life of travel. We have learned to be alone while trapped in a tiny room together, have learned how to talk when the other one needs distraction from boring work, and how to shut up when something is on the other’s mind. We have learned how to move around and into small spaces productively and independently, and how to get along during a hellish airport transfer at 4 AM that ended in an awkward interaction with our perhaps alcoholic hotel owner.
This is hardly to say that we’re not looking forward to going home or that we do not fight and get annoyed. Because we most certainly do; but we’re getting better at it, and are hopeful as it is said that the first year of marriage is the worst. If this is true, we feel surviving 200 days of a proto-marriage in which you are not passionately in love with the person or distracted by extensive wedding presents says a lot.
So congratulations to us. 200 days and most definitely still counting…
3 comments:
For a long time I thought you two were nuts, totally nuts. That might not be too far off the mark;), BUT you are also lucky enough to see the world, meet all it's people and experience all the little wonders like finding people you know at the other end of the world. That sort of stuff iss priceless, isn't it?
I might have mentioned it before, but if you ever even get close to Yangon, Myanmar, go see the Shwedagon Pagoda. It still stands as the most wonderful thing I have found in the world outside of my wife and children, and I have been around a bit, much like you two.
congratulations...it really is impressive that you two haven't given each other black eyes yet.
Yes, I agree that it's amazing that y'all can keep going through the fights and all.
Congratulations!
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