friday.  feb. 5.  2016

if there’s anything we’ve learned from being in mexico, it’s that they love their speed bumps-because they are everywhere-almost too redundantly, and they love to nickel and dime you.  besides having to pay an extra $1,000 for our rental car because of the government requirement for additional collision insurance, there was also too much sand in our car, causing them to fine us again, for $20.  He wanted more, and we told him no way.  he said they didn’t have vacuum’s anymore, that everything had been moved to a new location.  it’s really quite exhausting.  going to ruins is so much fun, except you are accosted along the whole trail.  so besides being constantly asked to buy stuff, pay extra, and flying over speed bumps, we really can’t complain.  it was a lovely, get-away-from-it-all trip.

i think people get into this mindset that life, and the american dream, is the house and mortgage payment, the two or three cars, the furniture, jobs, driving to soccer and doing errands…but to me, that’s not my american dream.  my dream is to see the world, and have our children seeing it with us.  meeting new people, cultures, places, food, experiences…that really delights my soul.  some people cling to the daily routine, i cling to not having a daily routine-it bores me.  and the more we travel, the more i find and see that there are people traveling constantly-on little money-seeing the world.  you don’t have to be rich, you have to be smart in how you do this.  there are so many world travelers who have hacked their way into traveling cheap, and i want to learn more from them.

we got our first housesit on trustedhousesitters.com.  it’s pretty exciting.  you never know how it’ll go with the people you meet, or with their pets-stepping into their lives for a bit, but seriously, what an adventure.  we skyped with the couple-they live in northern france in a village 3 hours from paris.  they are so lovely-from england, the husband was born in ireland and doesn’t appreciate his english accent, but we just loved listening to them both.   they are quite nice, and fun to chat with-we had quite a few laughs!  they have two dogs, and a fat cat.  we just have to feed the dogs morning/night, and the cat roams and feeds on it’s own.  we can tour and be gone all day if we want.  but i love the idea, to exchange housesitting/petsitting for a free place to stay.  and to see a whole new part of the world.  we have found some very aggressive websites for airfare too.  with a little planning, we have figured out, using our southwest miles to get us to the east coast takes off a ginormous amount in airfare, and it’s free(besides a small tax to pay on ticket).  then we found airfare for $661 per person round trip to paris-direct flight.  which is amazing!  especially for summer travel.  i usually don’t like to travel in the summer, tons of people, lines, it’s hot…but since we decided to housesit, we will go whenever.  i did find before/after summer round trip tickets in the $500 range which is even better, we’ll do another time.  hopefully we love this experience, and the other couple love us, because they have already offered for us to come again at christmas/new years-which would be pretty amazing.  but of course, we’ll take it one trip at a time.

*picture below is of the village we will be staying in-Fougerolles-du-Plessis, France.