Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Far Away Adventures

This has been going on for a year now. If you have followed along for awhile, we are an adventure family. In fact if you look through the archives you'll see that this was started when we lived in Germany or just shortly before we moved there. We are extremely patriotic for our country and at the same time we have a thirst for the world.

Almost exactly a year ago we shipped our son off to the Marines. It was a proud moment for all three of us and we knew he was in good hands. Mary came to me with an idea she had been working on. Thursday marks the "end" or actually the beginning. Let's go back.

In August of last year to make extra money Mary started tutoring. Imagine you need help in a language and there is a Dr. Jewell with a Doctorate in Language Aquisition on line willing to do some tutoring. She got so busy she had to turn people away. She worked 6 days a week. The only night off was Friday. All the while she was still teaching high school students full time. Her school salary went to the family. Her tutoring money went into the bank.
At the same time we both worked on cutting our expenses. We stopped going out to eat. We stopped going for coffee. We cut back on movies and other stuff. We sold stuff on eBay. Lot's of stuff.

Thursday she flies to Kazakhstan. There she will spend a few days adjusting to the time change and touring the country. He main goal is to visit a Gulag. Then she flys to Mongolia. She'll be there for almost 8 weeks. Her first 2-3 weeks will be teaching English on an organic farm where tourists go to work on the farm. The actual farm workers need to learn English to better communicate with the tourists. Then she heads to the Gobi Desert for 3-4 weeks. There she is teaching English at a school.

This starts a year of adventure for her as she takes a year sabbatical from her real job. More than likely there trip in my future with her for a time.

People ask me all the time, "what will you do when Mary is gone". There is lot's to do to get ready for the next round of research on races. Berlin, Chicago, Kona and NYC are on the horizon. There is also another project I'm working on that I'll announce soon. It's something I've been doing for years now and it's time to actually put it to the test instead of simply word of mouth.

If you have questions on how we saved for this adventure or any of the many adventures we go on hit me up in the comments. I'd be happy to share how we go through the budgeting process.

It's a good life.....


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