Starting with our home-leave: "Home-leave" is an official term meaning "minimum four weeks of extra paid vacation for the foreign service member so that you remember what it's like in America and also so you still think this job is cool after a few years' hard labor."
We Nelsons have been trained not to count on where we expect to be living or working in the future. For now, we can absolutely assured that we have a whole month to be on vacation in the US. Seize the day! Believe it or not, many foreign service members decry their enforced home leave... Why you ask? Because they have forgotten what it's like to have only 10 days' annual vacation? Probably, yes, but also because it is expensive. The majority of people would have trouble spending more than a reasonable one or so weeks at their in-laws, and other places to stay generally cost money.
Our solution to this was to stay the one or so weeks at the respective in-laws', to travel between said in-laws' homes by our car which is wisely cared for by my parents while we are out of country, car-camping on our way from one to the other and back again. Thus, our schedule looked like this:
1. A week in Europe on the way, where we immersed ourselves in wine, bread, cheese, art, Parisian charm, and Disneyland
2. A few days in NM doing crazy-mad shopping that is hard for those not living in 3rd world countries to comprehend, as well as dentist and doc visits
3. Driving, camping, driving, etc, to include the following stops:
- Rock climbing in the Jemez, NM
- National forest near Pagosa Springs, CO
- Mesa Verde National Park, CO
- Arches NP, UT
- Zion NP, UT
- A'le'inn cafe along the Extra Terrestrial Highway in Rachel, NV (a quick stop so we could get out of NV before the tires melted)
- Mammoth Lakes, CA (in a BED)
- Yosemite NP, CA
- San Francisco, baby!
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| The accomplished Junior Ranger in her favorite milieu. |
4. 10 days' worth of playing, 7-yr-old birthday celebrating, and avoiding forest-fire smoke inhalation at my in-laws' in OR
5. Driving, camping, driving, to include:
- Boise, ID, and a visit to an old college buddy of Andrew's
- Yellowstone NP, WY
- Grand Tetons NP, WY
- An night with a hotel shower and laundromat in lovely Laramie
- A few nights at one of our favorite haunts, my grandfather's house in CO
6. Back to NM for the last of the crazy shopping, packing, eating, and telling everyone we see how awesome our trip was.
Now, my dears, now, I sit in a lovely home in a cloudy city on the other side of the world. A city crammed with people, motorbikes, and houses that go UP; with rooftops where people gather, work, eat, and stare at us; where the dogs, roosters, and the locally-made horn blowing keep waking us up at night; where prayer flags flutter from buildings, marigolds decorate doors and gates, and people, dogs, and cows walk around with the red tikka on their foreheads. We can see the hills surrounding much of the Kathmandu valley from our own rooftop. I look around, think back to just 2 or 3 weeks ago, and wonder which experience is the dream.
