Road To Buenos Aires – I (¡Voy a ir para Argentina!)
I will be going to my penultimate continent, South America. The only continent that I won’t have been to then will be Antarctica and I think I will get that too before too many years pass. I hope to be adding at least four or five countries to my tally, which is kind of cool for me personally.
My father was a civil engineer, and, in his early years, a Wyoming cowboy who fought in WWII. He started going overseas, I believe, in the 50s. Certainly before I could walk he had taken his family to Europe on the Queen Mary, and I remember from stories that I was not yet speaking when we moved to Bangladesh (it was East Pakistan then). He worked on numerous projects all over the world, improving roads, dams, bridges, etc. And on average, up until I was 17 or so, we averaged a different country every 2 – 3 years.
As part of my minimalism kick, over the last year or so I have been going through what few mementos I still had. Most of my keepsakes burned up in a storage unit fire in the year 1999 – lost everything from my childhood and the military and family (very liberating in a way). But I still had stuff that I carried with me.
Minimalism. What does it mean? At the risk of sounding vague, this absolutely depends on the individual. However I am approaching it from the point of view of a serial expatriate, and as a TCK. And I’m sure other serial ex-pats and TCKs will be able to relate to this.
I work out very regularly. There have been times in my life when I don’t work out as often as I should, when my commitment has fallen by the wayside, but following the downward spiral of my health some years ago I have been quite, I hesitate to use this word, “religious” about it. Particularly since I had gained a lot of weight and I wanted to lose it. But of course losing weight is mainly diet and not exercise (but that is another story)