I think maybe the travel bug was instilled in me at an early age.  My very first lucid memories are of being a little girl living in England.  My dad was in the Air Force and his last duty station was at Mildenhall Air Force Base in Suffolk.  I was born in Virginia and lived briefly in Ohio before we moved to England when I was three years old.  But I don’t remember much of the time before England.  We lived there until I was six years old, so I have a lot of memories… even though that was a long time ago.  While we were living in England, I got to visit Tunisia with my parents.  I also visited Wales and Ireland, though I don’t remember them.

Me and my mom on a camel in Tunisia, New Year’s 1978…

We spent two more years living near Washington, DC, a very cosmopolitan place as American cities go.  I remember in first and second grades having kids in my classes who came from different countries.  I remember one girl was from Iran.  Her name was Gissou and this was during the height of the whole Iranian hostage crisis deal that was in the news.  She probably heard lots of variations of the old song “Barbara Ann” turned into “Bomb Iran”.

I also remember learning about different countries in those years.  In first grade, we learned about Japan and even had a day in which we tasted Japanese food and learned a few Japanese words.  In second grade, we learned about Thailand.  I distinctly remember learning about houses on stilts.  Incidentally, I also remember learning about Vincent Van Gogh that year.  I wonder if today’s teachers have the same freedom my teachers did back in the day.  My guess is that they don’t.

When I was eight, we moved to the Tidewater area of Virginia, where I was born.  My parents opened a business and I grew up in a much more rural and redneck school system…  I was still exposed to different cultures, though.  In Gloucester County, where I grew up, there is a section called Guinea, which is where Cornwallis’s defectors supposedly settled.  In the early 1980s, there was a time when you could hear their very distinctive guttural dialect and, if you weren’t from there, you wouldn’t understand a word they said.

My parents continued to travel, though they never took me with them on their trips.  My eldest sister joined the Peace Corps and lived in Morocco for two years.  She lived in several different countries, as a matter of fact, and learned to speak several languages.  She’d always bring me gifts from her travels to places like Egypt, India, and Jordan.

I remember going to college and having a roommate for ONE week.  This roommate, who turned out to be a complete bitch, told me she was passionate about traveling.  I remember feeling indifferent about travel.  In fact, at that time in my life, I just wanted to get a degree, get a job, and have a family.  I moved out of that dorm room after a week because my travel loving roommate had a penchant for bringing people into the room at 3:00am and turning on the overhead light.

Things didn’t turn out the way I planned them to after I graduated from college.  I had trouble finding a job.  I also had a burning desire to leave my parents’ home… and they wanted me gone.  So, following in my sister’s footsteps, I joined the Peace Corps and went off to Armenia for two years.  I still didn’t have the travel bug, though.  In fact, the love of travel wasn’t awakened in me until the summer of 1996, when a friend and I went on a trip to Turkey and Bulgaria via bus from Armenia.  We spent three days on a bus going to Istanbul by way of the Republic of Georgia.  Our trip took three weeks and was fraught with challenges…  but that’s when I learned to love travel.

A photo taken on April 24, 1997 at Armenia’s Genocide Memorial.  I used to live across the street from this, but when I lived there, the eternal flame was only turned on on April 24th.

In 1997, I took a month and traveled by train for a month around Europe on the way home from Armenia.  I saw Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, France, and Spain, with a very brief stop in Amsterdam.  Ten years after that, my husband and I moved to Germany, where we visited all of the aforementioned countries except for Slovakia.  However, I added Switzerland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Hungary, Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, and Poland to the list of countries I’ve been to.  My husband also went on a few trips that didn’t include me and we also went to England for the first time since I was very young.

Since moving back to the United States, my husband and I have gone to the Caribbean twice, hitting the Virgin Islands (both British and US), Puerto Rico (yes, I know it’s in the US), St. Barts, Antigua, Barbados, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Grenada, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia.  I also went to Jamaica in 2002 to provide music for another sister’s wedding.  In 2012, we visited Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, and Scotland.  And in 2013, we will go to Italy and Greece… and I’m really toying with the idea of going to Costa Rica or Mexico.  We’ll see how things pan out.

I didn’t end up with a family or a career, unless you count writing as my career.  I did end up with a travel bug, though…  And now it’s time to write about it.