My Roomuseum

I finally finished my Roomuseum–an idea I had about halfway through our trip when I realized I had a growing collection of "artifacts" from the places we visited. 

Before I left on the trip, I didn't know what I was going to bring back with me. I thought I'd buy a pair of Argentinian leather boots or a leather jacket, and I wanted a variety of musical instruments from around the world. In the end, I didn't end up buying the boots or jacket, and the only instrument I bought was the sitar from India. Instead, I was always drawn to the textiles. Besides their inherent beauty, I'm fascinated by the patterns that often identify them with a particular tribe.

So I tacked them up on the walls of my bedroom, adding color and history to my living space. I typed out all the stories I remembered about the items, and put those on the wall, too.

A mask.

And one of me playing around with the mask...

This one's from India.

Much more fun than just throwing all this stuff in a box in the closet.

Best 43 Images of Animals We Encountered Around the World

I thought it would be a fun idea to compile some of the best images of animals we encountered during our trip, so Anne and I came up with this list. Some of them are quite hilarious. I tried to position them in chronological order, except for the first one, which is just a teaser to give you an idea of how amazing some of these encounters were...

Image 1: Anne leaning against a tiger at Tiger Kingdom in Chiang Mai, Thailand. 

2012 in Review and 2013 Resolutions

The other night I watched a National Geographic documentary on the first full ascent of the Everest made by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The most inspiring thing (which I didn’t know until now) was that after this moment, Hillary spent most of his life in Nepal, building schools and hospitals for the Sherpa people. As of now, he’s one of my new heroes in terms of making life choices and living a meaningful, fulfilled life. In this documentary, Hillary mentions a great quote that I’d like to share with you all: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is not safer than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Allan Keller.

2012 Overview

2012 was a good year... I would even go as far as to say that it’s been the best year of my life so far, at least in terms of adventure accomplishments. Considering I spent only 4 months out of 12 working, and the rest of the year traveling about and living frugally, I guess it was indeed the perfect recipe for a happy, fulfilled year. Long story short, here’s my 2012 in a nutshell: 

Indian Summer Days

Last weekend, my friend Jenni generously invited me along with some of her other friends to spend the weekend at a vacation house that her parents have rented up in Calistoga. The house was out of this world, an incredible 60 acre wine country estate with a pool, vineyards and apple trees. I brought my digital SLR (Nikon D90) with a 50mm lens and spent the weekend taking a lot of photos. It felt good and reinforced the conviction that photography is my one and true passion, as well as fueled the desire to shoot more.

All the photos below are straight from the camera, completely unedited. I changed the light temperature and color balance in the camera to obtain this green-yellowish color cast.

Lists

So I made it to New York City. In the past two months here, I've acquired a new skill that I might need to add to my resume sometime soon: cat sitter. I've had two house/cat sitting gigs so far and I have two more to go. They're all for friends of mine, or friends of friends. I'm beginning to wonder how long I could bounce around from house to house, living out of my suitcase (which has multiplied to three), before I just completely lose it. I started this blog post months ago, and just haven't had a chance to wrap it up because I've been trying to pull my life together. It's gonna be a long one, so brace yourselves ... this post is a retrospective of our trip around the world, in the form of lists.

While traveling, I always kept a little notebook on me. It came in handy for writing down addresses, drawing calendars and jotting down notes to myself. I kept a few on-going lists that I added to throughout the trip. This blog post combines all of my lists and expands on them. Here is a list of my lists. Click to jump to section.