#100 Cracking open the bottle

It’s spooky how intuitive librarians are. Back in August, we asked our librarian friends how they predicted our lives would change as a result of our travels. They recorded their ideas on how we might be changed – spurred by personal experiences, quotes about traveling, lines from a poem, hallucinations, wild guesses – then carefully tied each into a neat scroll and stuffed it into a long-necked bottle. The secret messages in the bottle stayed sealed in that bottle - until last night!

At our welcome home party last night, we “cracked” open the bottle and found inside this poem…

Mary and Kelly set sail ‘round the world
To see cities and cultures spread before them unfurled.
To teach and to learn was on their agenda
And they established a blog with their news to a-send-a.
We cheered them goodbye to all their exotic locales
And will delight in four months when they return to their pals.

And we found these predictions…

• the top three locations you visited are: 1) Spain, 2) Croatia, 3) Myanmar. Then again, this is just what we call a wild-assed guess!
• you will both come back teachers of the highest order
• pizza never tasted as good as it does at Bazbeaux.
• you will find a Pacific island and go there to live thereafter. (Perhaps Johnston Atoll?)
• you will have gained a greater appreciation for clutter and chaos and may even consider incorporating it into your life now!
• you will never have the same opinion about CNN “world” news nor will you think of CNN as a news company.
• you will appreciate an entire floor per person and an extra one after your trip. you will find ways to volunteer globally.
• you will continue to appreciate pork tenderloin and mashed potatoes.
• Life is really about relationships – about loving others. You had an amazing 4-month experience. The new lives that are intermingled with yours, the new places you’ve seen, the new cultures you’ve experienced, and all the knowledge you’ve gained is with you and in you. The magic of life is that you don’t know how it will affect you, but you can be assured that it will manifest itself in a thousand ways.
• the sheet music grant will still be going and I will still have a slot open for Mary to be my accompanist.

And these quotes…

• “Of all the unbearable nuisances, the ignoramus that has traveled is the worst.” - Frank McKinney (Kin) Hubbard
• “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.” – Francis Bacon (And for those of us in our prime, it’s a part of both!)
• “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one’s little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain
• “Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard
• “It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.” – Henry Ward Beecher
• “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” – Dr. Seuss

Thanks so much for welcoming us home with gusto and for looking into our future. We appreciate you all for your questions and for your enthusiastic interest in our experiences, for your cooking and knowing our favorite kinds of pie, for your sense of humor and laughing along with us, and for loving us just the way we are. And, as you can see, Kelly is still appreciating that pumpkin pie on Sunday morning.

Yours in hoping to live up to your predictions,
Mary