[Kate] A List of Luxuries

There are lots of great, breathtaking things about traveling, but there are also tons of downsides, especially for long trips.  Some of these we anticipated coming into the trip, some we didn't.  Here is a list of some of the things we miss (and often think about) about normal life.

A Room to Myself.  It's kind of crazy traveling with your family 24/7, and getting time to myself is more a luxury than a constant.  This is especially a problem with my singing, because as many of you might know, I have a habit of singing incessantly, which has inspired a wide variety of irksome (for me) rules on our family (no singing in the car, no singing in stores, no singing in restaurants, no singing on boats, no singing on chairlifts, no singing on gondolas, no singing on airplanes, etc).  Now, without my own room, I don't have somewhere to retreat when Cannon (normally the enforcer of these rules) vindictively forces me into silence.

Homemade Food.  Literally eating out for every meal, or scrounging to get a couple of crackers or an apple is fine for a week, or even a month, but at that point it gets tiresome, and we all feel a bit of a mess.  All of us crave different kinds of food, but we really want some "real" food.  I personally have been longing for sausage kale soup, breakfast hash (for dinner), and ravioli lasagna.

Rugby.  We all miss our puppy!  We have a few pictures sent to us on occasion, and we all are super excited to see her when we return to America in the fall before school.

This is Rugby on a trail near our house in California.

Time to Sleep In.  Okay, this one might be just me.  But I really, really, really miss sleeping in late.  My version of sleeping in doesn't seem to be the same as the rest of my family, and eight in the morning isn't rest luxury for me.  I want at least nine o'clock.

Talking to my Friends.  This is a given, because of course I miss all of my friends back in California.  I can still talk to them, but sometimes it can be hard with the WiFi getting spotty often.  Which leads me to my next point...

Reliable Wifi Connection.  In foreign countries, my normal American SIM card doesn't work, and we only buy SIM cards for each country for the parents, which makes sense.  But often we don't have reliable WiFi connection, which can be frustrating for homework and for talking to friends.

Traveling is great, and this really is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  But there are definitely some hard parts, however fun the rest of it is!