We Do Adventure

Nine years ago yesterday Rowan and I sat on a beach in Crete talking about the future. It was one of those moments that changes the way you see things from then on. For me it was the first time I realised I wanted to move on and do something different (well, sort of the same-but-different) from what I'd been doing up to that point. We came back from the beach to a text telling us a plane had crashed in New York and walked into a hotel bar to join a crowd watching live TV coverage minutes before the second plane crashed into the Twin Towers. The world changed that day. But for all the things that were different in the post-911 world what we were doing wasn't much changed, at least not dramatically so. Until two years ago. Two years ago today we arrived in Mostar , after an epic road trip across Europe, to start doing something the same-but-different in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a life change unlike any I'd imagined, although Rowan had spent half her life wanting to d...

Two months today we'll be driving across Europe with all our most important possessions packed in the back of a van. It's a funny thought. There's still something slightly unreal about it. Perhaps it won't dawn on us until the morning we leave, perhaps it won't hit home until we walk into our new accommodation in Mostar. I have so little experience of moving it's really hard to predict. I was telling a friend today that part of me would like to fast forward from now until then - skipping the whole, undoubtedly painful, process in-between. But it doesn't work like that. And nor should it. The leaving and grieving is important. So far it's not been outwardly emotional, or at least not in a sobbing kind of way. (Doubtless that'll come!) But locking the door on our church youth event on Saturday night was strange. It's been one of the centre points of almost every weekend for the last five and a half years. It's over now. That the event won't...