Soul searching around the world.
Alan and Jen
Soul searching around the world.
We are both in our late 30's. We met our first year of college and have been dating since we were 18 and married since we were 25. We have no children and have decided a long time ago to forego having any. We were both born and raised in the Los Angeles area, although Jen lived in Bakersfield for about 10 years during elementary school through sophmore year of high school. Jen has been practicing as a real estate attorney since 2002. Alan went back to school a year and a half ago to pursue a hotel management degree and was interning at the Four Seasons Hotel and then at the Mosser Hotel. He graduated this past May at the top of his class.
For some time now, we've been talking about doing some extended travel to figure out the next adventure in our lives. We both crave to see the world and live in a foreign place. We moved to San Francisco five years ago as the first big step of leaving LA. Our life was really comfortable up there so we became complacent. We bought a house in a great neighborhood (Glen Park) and made a lot of new friends. We joined the San Fransciso Dragon Warriors dragon boat team and was having a blast getting in shape and doing a bunch of outdoor activities with our teammates and friends. Life in the Bay Area was going so well that we almost took a step in the opposite direction of our ultimate goal by putting an offer on a bigger house in the East Bay. We almost became suburbanites again (reference to our OC stint of 4 years). Unfortunately (or fortunately), the recent economic downturn hit us both this year and we were both laid off from our jobs. Instead of wallowing in misery about our lost jobs and stressing out about finding new ones, we took this as an opportunity to finally do that extended travel that we've been talking about for years. It was too hard to leave the security of our jobs so this was what we actually needed to shake up our life and kick start our dream of living a life off the beaten path. We hope that through our travels we will be inspired to find new paths for our future together.
