Look, Ma! No spreadsheet!

What happens when a natural born researcher doesn't do her job?

(Sorry, but I am unable to create an audio track this week. My fellow airline passengers are grateful.)

My brother is the Spreadsheet King. If there is a topic pertaining to his life and interests that can be thoroughly researched and tracked, he has probably already done it. And if he hasn’t, it is likely on a spreadsheet of future spreadsheets.

I am not nearly as addicted to research as my brother, but let’s just say it runs in the family. I am particularly adept at researching travel. I create databases, plan itineraries, make notes of details and contact info, and am generally tireless when it comes to overturning every stone before ever leaving home.

Until this time.

I just didn’t do it. Yes, I’ve been busy getting ready to go, but that’s no excuse. In the past, I have always been willing to sacrifice a night’s sleep if that’s when the travel research needs to happen. It’s one of my great joys in life. But this time I simply opted out.

We bought our plane tickets, flying into Seoul then Singapore in December, and out of Ho Chi Minh City then Sydney in March. And I committed the time surrounding our former exchange daughter’s wedding as needed. But the rest of the planning just went undone.

When our plane landed in Seoul, South Korea at five o’clock Monday morning, we had no plan for how to fill our eighteen hour layover, other than a general understanding that we wanted to leave the airport and see a little bit of the city. The bare minimum research had told me that was possible. We looked around at the signs, saw little to no English anywhere, and just laughed. We had no idea where to go or what to do. Fortunately, the whole day was still ahead of us and the sleepy airport was just coming to life for the day. There was no rush to figure it out.

We split up to use the restrooms. I washed my face, then brushed my teeth and my hair. After an all-night flight, even a pleasant one like we’d had, it felt wonderful to freshen up. When we each emerged from our respective restrooms, though, the signs were still all in Korean and the toothpaste hadn’t filled us with any new knowledge. We laughed some more.

We did figure out how to go through customs. Then we got directions to where we could store our big backpacks for the day. After yet a little more laughter at our absolute lack of knowledge and understanding, we managed to get ourselves onto a bus for a “transit tour.”

Apparently the Korean government sponsors free city tours for passengers with long layovers, so we donned our tour lanyards, grabbed matching tour-issued umbrellas, and followed the friendly woman with the green flag, the one rattling on and on quite knowledgeably in broken English onto a bus and into the city.

It was actually great. We toured the former presidential palace and explored the narrow and winding back alleys of a cool part of town known for it’s little restaurants and shops. Our dumpling soup, complete with sides of kimchee and pickled veggies was delicious.

Now we are killing a few more hours in the airport before our next flight leaves late tonight. We will arrive in Singapore at five o’clock tomorrow morning. I think we have basic lodging and travel arrangements in place for the first few days, just enough to get us going, but to be honest, I am not entirely sure that I got everything right. The vast majority of the trip—from now until mid-March—remains unplanned, unresearched, unspreadsheeted (Hmm . . . what do you supposed the past tense of spreadsheet, as a verb, should be? The options that come to mind don’t sound quite right, haha.) For the first time in our lives, we are intentionally traveling under-researched and not at all prepared.

We did plan out what is in our backpacks, but even those details are sketchy.

Because we’ve never traveled like this before, and we’ve never been to this region, we may have done it all wrong.

That’s ok.

Things will go wrong

It is. Really. We’ve decided ahead of time that we are totally fine with things going wrong. Already we have made a couple of little mistakes. The bottles of Tapatio hot sauce I brought for our Malaysian daughter didn’t make it through security. They were an ounce and a half too large. We accidentally bought an entire box of candy today when we had intended to buy a single piece each but didn’t understand the process. We forgot a crucial piece of electronics charging equipment that we will have to replace. And we are only two days in.

The weather today in Seoul was rainy, windy, and cold. The forecast for Singapore where we will spend the next two days, is solid rain—90-100% chance of rain predicted for every hour of the day. The umbrella was left behind when we were trying to cut weight and clutter from our packs.We may have to buy umbrellas.

We have somehow managed to work our initial travel schedule to include back to back red-eye flights, followed by a night in a capsule hotel (look it up), followed by an overnight bus ride. That’s four nights straight, across a wide swath of time zones and the International Date Line before we get to sleep in a real bed. I’ll let you know next week how that one worked out.

But even if it’s a little miserable, it’s still ok. We decided not to be stressed out by it. Is that a decision one can make indiscriminately? Will the resolution hold up under pressure? We shall see. We have high hopes of enjoying the adventure, even when it gets a little challenging. Even this afternoon, as we both felt the fatigue of the last night’s 13 hour flight hit, we made a point of assuring each other that we are not upset about anything, just a little tired. Ok, really tired. We laughed, got something to eat and drink, and found a comfortable place in the airport to relax a bit.

I, a born and bred researcher, didn’t do enough research. We aren’t prepared. We will face a lot of surprises as a result, and we will constantly find ourselves adjusting, adapting, and problem-solving over the next couple of months. It may get a little crazy.

And that’s ok.

We likely don’t have the same dreams

Likely, we won’t travel like you would travel. Some of our decisions might make you rather uncomfortable. Ha! They may make us rather uncomfortable, too. But you get to make your decisions, according to your style, and we get to make ours. That’s how it works. You get to have your dreams and figure out to what extent you are going to pursue them, and we will have ours.

Perhaps your dream is to have a beautiful home with extra bedrooms in the same area as your extended family. Good for you! Go for it! Honor God with that! Perhaps your dream is to grow lovely gardens full of flowers and vegetables. How wonderful! Honor God with that! Maybe your dream is to be involved in your community. I love it. Honor God with that. Our dream happens to be to get rid of most of our possessions and wander around the globe with very little planning. And yes, our hope is to honor God with that dream.

I’m glad you’re reading along. I will continue checking in here every Tuesday morning. Hopefully I will even get the time zone right. It will probably be fairly humorous at times. At other times it will be deep and meaningful. For today and the next couple of days, it will just be a self-inflicted exercise in sleep deprivation—like a reverse sleep study gone haywire.

What is your dream?

But what I want to know is this: What is YOUR dream? What are you doing about it? How are you pursuing it, even imperfectly? Why is it important to you?

Happy Christmas season, friends, those of you who celebrate it. For you who don’t, I love you just as much. Blessings upon you, whatever holidays your life looks like at this time of year. Remember that things will go awry, no matter how well you planned and prepared. Remember to laugh. Remember to look at your partner, or your loved one, or yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m not upset with you; I’m just tired. We’ll get through this.”

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Weekly gratitude shout-outs

Before you go, let me express my special gratitude to three of my subscribers:

Nancy Brown took me in as a friend when I was just the new kid in Montana, with an unfortunate history of having lived in both Washington State and Southern California—both historically unpopular with Montanans. We hae navigated parenthood together, read and reviewed books together, studied Scripture together, and gone for many a walk up a trail and float down a stream. I have benefitted from her wisdom and grace for many years now. Thanks, Nantze.

Susan Tanabe is a fellow former educator from Salem, Oregon. In fact, I even taught in her former classroom for awhile. She is one of those people who has a heart of gold to serve her students, her community, her family and friends. I have enjoyed connecting over matters of faith, social issues, education, and all things related to Japan—a topic on which she has extensive knowledge and experience. Her email address is a little mysterious, so it took me awhile to figure out who she was on my subscriber list, but I am so glad she’s here. Thanks, Susan.

Kim Cummings is another friend from Salem and former educator. She and I met at church and always seemed to have similar opinions and thoughts on various topics that arose. We were able to serve together in a women’s Bible study for a while, and I enjoyed getting to know her even better during that time. I appreciate her insight and effort to make others feel included and valued. Thanks, Kim.

That’s all my sleepy brain can put together for this week, friends. I’d love to hear about your dreams. Keep reading and you’ll get to hear about our mishaps Should be good for a laugh, if nothing more

Until next week,

Sherry