I have spent the last year writing about every trip I have taken since my conception in China in 1949...the Chinese believe that my life began then. So far I have published 160 entries containing 163 thousand words and 4831 pictures. Amazingly I have found pictures for all trips except three. Digitizing all these slides and prints has been quite an exercize! I have six blogs to go from the year 1993 before I am up to date, although I may add more entries for trips we have taken around Colorado and the Southwest.
Out of curiosity, I recently counted the countries I have lived in and visited. I've lived in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, Germany and Belgium, and visited 57 for a total of 63. Being a goal driven person, I decided to set my goal for 100 countries.
As a consequence fo setting this goal, for my 40th Anniversary in 2012, rather than flying directly to New Zealand Linda and I decided to fly to Honolulu and take a cruise from there to Sydney via American Samoa, Samoa, Fiji (although I was there at the age of 3 on my way to Australia), Vanuatu, and three islands in French Caledonia, which will give me a good start towards the goal.
So while travelbloggers shouldn't set such trivial goals, but just travel for the sake of travel, for learning about other peoples and cultures, and for self awareness, I have basically done all of that. I am intimately familiar with a wide range of cultures, speak four languages, and I know myself. I now look forward to visiting more places as a consequence of having set a goal. Most places will be short visits. But I did that when I first explored Europe...visiting over a dozen countries in 21 days with the Eurailpass. But short visits often lead to long visits, and we lived 18 years in Europe.
In the fall of 2013, having lived in Western Europe for 18 years, we plan to visit Central and Eastern Europe including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia.
Early in 2014, having never been to this continent, we plan to visit South America, traveling by land and air from Equador, Peru, Bolivia, to Chile, and from there taking another cruise around the southern end of the continent to the Falkland Islands, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil.
At the end of 2014, to celebrate my 65th birthday, we should reach 100 countries by visiting the island nations in the Caribbean and Central American countries.
During these three years I also plan to volunteer to do some surveying for a charitable organization that plans and designs clinics and schools in several countries in Africa.
So while my journeys to date will be entered within the next couple of weeks, I will be continuing to blog for at least the next three years. I would be pleased to hear from fellow bloggers about their reactions to my travels to date, and my future travels.
This is a highly impressive resume of your blogging that you have posted. I am going to nominate you for the Blogger of the Week. We dont know who will be the next winner yet, but you will be on the list and hopefully others will second, third... my nomination of you to help convince us that you are the one to choose. I will also give you my recommend.
Blogs published by Bloggers of the Week will appear in the 'Blogger of the Week' section on the Front Page. Also, a Blogger of the Week award will be placed their Profile Pages.
