I haven’t posted since the world changed, so here are a few quick updates and thoughts:

• My “one month in a different country for twelve months” adventure is on pause for obvious reasons.
• I flew from Bangkok, Thailand to Ottawa, Canada, landing on March 18, and immediately started the 14 day self-isolation requested of international travelers.  
• I’m in a lovely AirBnB with toilet paper, a guest Netflix account, and amazing wooden floors, that being over one hundred years old, impose a house rule of no shoes allowed.
• I am somewhat intrigued by the idea that I can spend two weeks only in slippers.
• I will pull myself away from Netflix and the most comfortable bed I’ve had in months, to write and post about my fifth month (February) – in Hanoi, Vietnam.
• I think I will hold them until I can post them all at the same time to minimize how weirdly out of place they may sound.
• I am tuning in to the live TED interviews at noon ET this week, which are connecting me to smart people and good ideas worth spreading, which I apparently have been craving.
• I also have a stash of chocolate whenever that craving hits, and I know it will when I next feel aimless or drifting.
• I have often admitted that part of the idea of traveling for a year, was to delay the decision of where I will next reside.
• The constant messaging of ‘stay home’ makes me wonder about the definition of home and what it means to me.
• As I travelled, I avoided the question of ‘where are you from’ and began to describe myself as a Canadian who has lived in the States for a long time, and has stuff stored in San Francisco.
• When I felt a visceral need to leave Thailand for somewhere I thought I could feel stable and supported for an unknown period of time through an unprecedented crisis, it was my hometown that came to mind (or rather came to my heart), where I haven’t been registered to vote in over thirty years.
• I don’t know why the analogy of Joseph returning to Bethlehem runs through my head, but it feels like the whole world is being called to their birth place.
• It feels like we are feeling more like one planet than ever before, at the same time that we are (re)learning how to live and thrive just within the scale of a walking-distance village.
• I am grateful for my local village, and my global village, as I physically isolate but not socially isolate.
• Though, I admit that I have always preferred doing jigsaw puzzles by myself.

Virtual hugs to all.