A Return “Home” to a Beautiful Tahoe Wedding

After a year on the road, we were really curious to find out how it would feel to come back in San Francisco where we lived for 11 years prior to this life now. Would it feel strange to be back? Would we now feel out of place? How would it be to see some of our friends after such a long absence?

Well, we got the perfect opportunity to take a trip back to San Francisco for our good friends’ David and Haley’s wedding in Lake Tahoe. David and Haley have been close friends with us for many years. They visited us in Mexico over Christmas last year right after their engagement, and it was “Reverend Dow” that asked us to repeat-after-him for our own I-Do’s a little over 2 years ago.

[pe2-image src=”http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-CQC3eMFhCOs/VhfJvhVV5TI/AAAAAAAA4z0/q2PgYsKNpbI/s144-c-o/IMG_5783.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/115263927216347870948/Blog39AReturnHome#6203648829965067570″ caption=”Perfect weather and scenery for a beautiful beach wedding in Lake Tahoe” type=”image” alt=”IMG_5783.jpg” ]

For their wedding, we were thrilled the date worked well and that we were in a place where we could take a break and feel safe leaving our van unattended. Sadly, we’ve missed other weddings and important events because of the difficulties figuring out in advance how/where to fly home from and what we’d do with Titus. For their wedding, everything lined up perfectly for us. We had just booked a trip to the Galapagos before the wedding, so we knew exactly where we were going to be in Ecuador. Ecuador is a great place to leave from because of the safe airport parking and they don’t put anything in your passport that would tip off a customs officer that that you are leaving a vehicle unattended in their country. Which due to import rules, is a very big no no for foreigners.

Also, this trip back would give us a great chance to see our friends, experience SF again, and for Jenine visit some of her family. We were especially keen to travel back as we are starting to think about where we want to live next year after our trip (although, we’ve stopped considering this a trip and instead consider it simply living life on the road). Seeing our friends and our old city again would bring those emotions into our decision of what we’d like to do next.

Well it was completely amazing, and in some different ways than we imagined. There wasn’t really culture shock, aside from speaking english and having amazing restaurants everywhere, and it didn’t feel strange to be back in SF, although, I don’t think that SF can ever truly feel like home. It’s more of a beautiful luxury resort that’s completely amazing for however long you get to stay there, but it also feels like once you check-out, the next person is eagerly waiting to check in, they are willing to pay way more for your room than you were, and you are not sure if the front desk even still remembers you.

Most importantly though, we were excited to see our friends and see how we can pick things back up with them. Relationships are, more than anything else, what leads to the most happiness in life. And we were truly humbled by the love we felt from the people we care about. It was so great to see some of our best friends (AKA our SF family), and realize that distance doesn’t mean that friendships need to change.

We of course had to answer the question “How does it feel to be back?” over and over, And the answer truly was – “It feels great!” It feels great to see our friends and family, it feels great to see people doing so well, it feels great to be at this incredibly special wedding, and it feels great to see some of the beautiful parts of California again.

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What does this mean? Are we homesick?

George would say: Certainly I feel like I’m missing great times with people I care about. But on the other hand, it did feel natural and easy to plug back in and being away made the reunion feel that much more special. The trip back was pretty easy, and maybe these days nobody or no place needs to feel that far away if you work on staying in touch and visiting often.

Jenine would say: Homesick isn’t the right word. Peoplesick? It really made me miss people even more, and I left feeling a little sad. True friendships pick right back up where you left off, no matter the time or distance, but I would be happy picking them back up more often. Although, like we mentioned, so many of our friends and family have already “checked-out” of the SF/bay area, and undoubtedly more will do so in the future. So being back there isn’t necessarily the answer.

We do agree that it is important to work on the relationships we care about and keep them current. We try to chat with people back home often on the road and stay up to date. If we decided to live abroad on a more permanent basis and if we work on maintaining our friendships, we think we can keep them healthy. In some ways, you can make them stronger. Nobody calls anybody anymore, so when you get to talk on the phone, it feels special. Less and less people go and visit each other, so when we get to visit or someone comes and visits us, it is very very special.

It’s still up in the air whether we return back to the west coast next year, but either way, we’ve learned something important about maintaining and working on relationships. We unfortunately did not get to see everybody we wanted to, as we were in Tahoe and it was a quick trip, however, we’ll be in touch!

Some amazing moments from David and Haley’s wedding in Tahoe. Thank you so much for letting us be part of your special day:

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View all pictures, including some of our drive along the coast of Ecuador leading up to the wedding. We were hoping to find some great beach camping and surf. We found the camping, but the surf was so / so as it was off season. It was actually pretty dead along the coast, which was peaceful, but it didn’t really capture our hearts.

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