And then we're home!

While it's a little sad to end traveling, in general I'm actually feeling pretty good about returning. Much moreso than I did after my last trip. Maybe part of it is that 1 month seems like a holiday, and after 3 months you've adjusted to being away all that much more, and there's more of a culture shock. But some of it is also probably that I'm just a lot more content with my home and my work and my life and lots of other things (like just being married!) compared to last time.

Our garden took off like crazy in our absence. (Lorien having installed an irrigation system shortly before the wedding presumably helped a great deal with that.) The bougainvillea (take a look back at the Malaysia pictures from the Cameron Highlands) is thriving, which is somewhat amazing considering that last year we didn't even know we had it, because it was totally surrounded by the wisteria. Speaking of wisteria, it grows like crazy. In just one month of being away it had totally climbed up the pole to the clothesline. When we moved in I concluded that the previous owners had totally neglected it, since it was so overgrown. Now I realize that it just grows and grows and grows and grows. I think I've already spent way too much of my life trimming it, and we need to maybe seriously cut it way back and try to get it a bit more under control. Our vegetables and herbs are also doing pretty good, lots of big tomato plants.

Dirk is quite happy to be home. Or at least in the general vicinity of our house, as I think it's the outdoors that he missed the most. We brought him back from a friend's place, where they were taking care of him while we were away. We let him out of his travel box, he looked around the house a little bit, and in probably less than a minute he was out the cat door and wandering around outside. Thankfully he doesn't seem too angry at us for abandoning him for month.

And we were blessed the day we got back with a gorgeous sunset.

Thanks for the good wishes we got from people while we were traveling, and we're glad that some people got some enjoyment out of this blog. We're going to keep it for a while and see how it goes. It seems like a convenient way to keep in touch with people, posting here and there about what's going on in our lives, and people can check in sometime if they're curious about what's up. In case anybody is wondering, it was incredibly easy to set up. And while the software has a few quirks and is sometimes a little bit buggy, in general it goes pretty smoothly.