I’m flying over Billings, Montana in a 767-300. It’s been 54 days since I left the ground in Utah back in June, and I of course have mixed feelings about returning home. I’m anxious to get to work – teaching is what I do and what almost everything is for, for me. But I’m always sad to be leaving Europe. It’s mostly about the difficulty in returning, of course. I don’t feel bad when I leave Denver, Chicago, or Pennsylvania because if I want to return the flight is cheaper and the travel time lesser than the money or time required to return to Europe. I know I’ll be back in 24-36 months, but I wish I could just – like I can with the U.S. – just decide “I want to go there next month” and then go. The fact that it’s usually far out of reach makes it sadder to leave.

I’ve decided to continue with posts from my experiences from this summer. I still haven’t written anything about Paris, about my trip “by the numbers,” and more… I can’t just drop it, given all I’ve seen and visited. I’m going to write more about every city I’ve visited this year. I may also look back at 2011, which I’ve never written about publicly before – that’s when my Europe thing began. Maybe, too, I’d like to write reviews of each of the books I’ve read this summer. This list is aspirational. Need I say so?

Also aspirational is my second novel draft (the first is basically through the editing process and I’m in search of agents, if you know a girl or a guy). I’m about 50k words through a planned 70k-word draft. Then I’ll edit. It should take a year. Here’s hoping.

So I’m signing off for now, but there will be more to come. Thanks for hanging with me this year.

As always, you can see all of my posts from 2017 traveling here.