Nomadic reflections - Flying back from Malaga

The lifestyle change and the change of perspective as seen from high above France somewhere, 50 days into our journey.

The last three years before we started full-time traveling, we spend one month each winter at the Canaries. Now we are flying back from Malaga, and it feels the same. It feels like flying home from a vacation. But something is very different. This time we are NOT going back to work. Winter is not coming. It is completely different.

It is hard to describe, and yet I want to. I want to share the inner experience of this journey as well as the obvious adventures.

Status is, we have been full-time travelers for almost three months, seven weeks of which were preparation: Clearing out our home in Copenhagen, converting the red bus into a tiny home. The following four weeks have been very vacation-like, since we flew to Malaga, lived in a rented house, and drove a rented car. Just like we used to do when we traveled out of our home base in Copenhagen.

But this is different. Now we’re flying home to the bus after a month of work and sun and adventure walks beside rivers and over mountains. We feel the butterflies in the stomach. We feel weird, happy, excited, tired, and a bit overstimulated.

The adventure is continuing, or, you could say, just beginning. We have been dreaming about living in a tiny house, dreaming about full-time travels, dreaming about being together full-time, dreaming about changing switching our lifestyle to a more of a nomadic one. But it does not happen overnight. It happens step by step. We have been living the transition for 7+4 weeks now, feeling the subtle changes in our perspectives, our being, our viewpoint, and even our dreams.

Now, we will learn to live in the bus, move it around, and get all the last details to work. We need to install the compost toilet, buy a stove for heating, and fix some small things. And we need to get used to moving the bus around, our tiny house on wheels.

As I write this text, I am sitting in the airplane, looking out at the clouds. Our youngest is working on his reading skills; my daughter is rehearsing French sentences and looking after our dog. Our oldest son is reading a book.

My husband is also reading when he is not sleeping. He is the one to get up all the time when someone needs something from the overhead compartment. It is not a long flight, just 3,5 hours.

We got up this morning and cleaned the house, packed everything, and drove to the airport. And here we are, with butterflies in our stomachs and getting ready for our new life. Ready for the adventure ahead. Ready for all the new horizons, meeting new people, the languages, the museums, the cities, the songs we will sing, and the everyday life in the bus.

Flying is a fantastic in-between time. We are high up in the atmosphere. I can spend the time to soothe my sensitive system, writing affirmations, breathing deeply, massaging my feet, letting all (or some of) the impressions from Andalusia fly by in my mind, silently, leaving the footprint of knowing, of gratefulness, of beauty, of joy and praising the Lord for the time we have here on this planet, feeling so extremely lucky and ready for all that is coming.

Written somewhere high above France, September 20th, 2018