2 years later.....

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Hey,

Well if you're reading our entries in some sort of order I should probably clear things up. It's now only 9 days until 2011 and a lot has changed since out last entry a good 2 years ago. Both me and emma are now graduated from university, we are now married too and if you can tell from the location tracker we upped sticks (even if they were very shabby sticks) and decided to take it easy in the land of the 25 hour working day, South Korea. We never moved here in all honesty with any intention of staying here for more than 1 or 2 years, we have itchy feet. Indeed you might say the traveller inside us has got a bad case of athletes foot. Both of us are so curious to see the rest of the world that staying in Korea never seemed a possibility. We came here to teach, and teach we did showing children how to speak English in an academy/kindergarten. So to kind of put all this progress into some sort of understandable context its probably best to start at the beginning, as thats a great place to start usually.
The beginning in this instance is just after we had finished our last blog entry. We were in Poland and had just seen Auschwitz. It's a place thats hard to talk about but Emma had the dexterity in her vocabulary to put into words. However towards the end of the blog she mentioned the big storms we experinced in Krakow and how this was affecting her. Looking back of course, even though its been 2 years, it seems odd to see the mention that we experinced the loudest thunderstorm we'd ever heard. In the last two years we have definintely broken that particular record having spent summers in both South Korea and Malaysia, where huge storms can often be the norm.
To take it back to Emma however, the reference to her arm is probably going to need some explanation. Emma suffers from RSD, a condition which, to put it basically, tells her brain that a part of her body is malfunctioning and the brain sends pain to the area, despite the arm being perfectly fine. The end result of this bizarre condition is that Emma is in constant chronic pain which can have a hugely detrimental effect on her life.
What makes Emma special is the fact she doesn't let it have a hugely detrimental effect on her life. A condition which can often put people out of work at home has if anything inspired Emma to move onto even greater things. She pushes herself to try and be consistently excellent in everything she does. Despite the day to day symptoms of her condition she has managed to achieve her goals and then some. She is currently an English teacher half way round the world and, luckily for me, married. This despite a condition which she acquired one morning unexpectedly when she was 14 years old which has seriosuly hindered many other people. To me Emma is proof that the determination and grit of the human pschye can overcome anything.
Well to take it back to the story these thunderstorms were causing the pain in Emma's arm to esculate. We moved from Krakow on the overnight train to Bratislava in Slovakia but after just half a day in Bratislava we knew that Emma needed to rest her arm and that we couldn't do this in the hostel in Bratislava, as nice as the portraits of Bob Marley and Lenin were. We didn't write a blog about it because well even though we didn't say it between ourselves we were gutted. I tried not to show it myself to Emma because I knew she was going through a tough period and I didn't blame her at all but it was hard not to be dissapointed that our trip around Eastern Europe was over. It rained pretty much the whole time we were in Bratislava and we left to go back to university having had a great trip but knowing that it was tinged with regret.
Fast forward two years and Emma's arm is probably having its best period ever due to some new treatment and , although she is still in constant pain its manageable. We are as you know in South Korea and having got married and honeymooned in Malaysia and Singapore, now ready for our next big adventure.
We are coming towards the end of our contracts in korea and with money saved up we have decided to try and show what can be done with RSD. We are going back to Britain, but overland and without the use of planes.
To do this we will have to go through China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Holland and then back to England.
Over the next few weeks I hope to post updates of how our journeys going to go and how we are going to be doing this to help promote RSD awareness.
Until next time.

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