One Foot in America

Especially now, it feels like I've got one foot in America and the other in the Dominican Republic.  It won't always feel that way I'm sure but I just got home about a week ago and leave in another week.  Just how it turned out this time around.  I will be going down there one week per month from now on.

This last time I loved my time down there, but it is difficult to readjust to being back at home after being away a while.  In fact, I just felt like I got used to it again in time to go back there in a week!  I'm sure that will get better as the rest of my trips will be more spaced out.  These two just happened to be the very end of May and the third week of June.  Plus I went home to Illinois right after my DR trip so that shortened the time home as well.

It will take some getting used to, all this traveling.  However, I love being down there and I love being here, although I could go for a few more sunny days up here lately.  My boss told me I could get status just from the amount of travel I'm going to have so that'll be nice as I'll be eligible for free upgrades in the future.  In fact, this last time I got upgraded because my boss has status which is the first time I've ever flown business class and it was pretty awesome.  As my mom said, roughing it for Jesus haha

I've never been one on frequent flier stuff but maybe I should've been all along since I've traveled so much.  It has been truly a privilege to serve Jesus all over the globe and sometimes just travel for the fun of it.  Now it's in my DNA, way down deep in my bones.  And I met an incredible woman who loves to travel as well so double bonus!

I just filled out a global entry/TSA precheck application and am hoping I get those.  My boss said it probably looks like I'm a spy haha  It asked where I've lived since 2014 and that includes Myanmar and Spain.  Then it asked how many countries I've been to in that time and realized I have still kept up traveling in my 30's even though it felt like I had slowed down since my 20's.  As I said before, it's truly been an honor to serve Christ in vastly different places and traveled to several countries for fun as well.  Many people may not realize but when you're in different parts of the world it's extremely cheap to travel to different countries.  

I think this job will fit me quite well.  It requires a lot more travel than I'm used to for work but I think I'll end up enjoying it.  If I had a job like this earlier on I don't think I could've handled the contrast every few weeks between the 2 countries but now having traveled a lot I'm more used to it and have a better understanding of the differences than I did a decade or so ago.  So far, I've enjoyed it greatly.  It's hard to be away from my wife and baby of course but as I heard someone once say, it's okay for your kids to miss you.  Not that I'd like a job that required full time travel but this is okay for me in this stage of life.