Thoughts for the End of an Amazing Adventure

---

Good Morning Friends,

Well, we are back from an amazing 6+ months of traveling Asia and South America with a little western US and Mexico thrown in. As we settle back into our "real" lives we're continuously reminded of the many things we have to be grateful for.

We have seen beautiful places with charming, fascinating and wonderfully helpful people. We have seen the artistry and intelligence of thousands of years of people inhabiting this beautiful earth. We have been touched by total strangers who reached out to help us when we were lost or confused or sometimes just to talk. In all the months of traveling we never had one bad experience. Yes, sometimes our adventures were uncomfortable or slightly off-putting because we didn't understand the culture or the language. In China a guide took us down a street that within our framework would have been a "very scary place" in the US but... it turned out to be a normal middle-class neighborhood with children playing, people going to work and the grocery store and the elderly sitting in the sun visiting. Once we experienced the streets and started talking and smiling with folks, all the tension went away. We have found that most people around the world simply want to live in peace, to work for a better life for their children, have friends, enjoy their families, earn a living, and to share their ideas and ways of life with wayward travelers like us.

We are so glad to be back in our homeland but are grateful beyond belief that we have had this opportunity.

Wishing you all wonderful adventures!

Jean and Cope

"The Vision Held in the Heart"

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose.

A sunset, a mountain bathed in moonlight,

the ocean in calm and in storm--we see these,

love their beauty, hold the vision in our hearts.

All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Helen Keller

---