30!

Holy wow.  Today, July 4th, I turned the big 30.  Time flies and yet I have done a lot of living in the past 30 years.

Thanks to my parents and Camp Adventure I am quite well traveled and have been to 28 countries, though I think that there is still a lot more to see.  After all, I have friends who have been to twice as many.  In the next 30 years my dream would be to go to China, South Africa, Turkey (maybe not now but when things were settled), and India.  I would also love to take my husband and children to all of the countries I have been to.  Motoaki has only been to America, China, and Singapore.

I have also reached a lot of life milestones.  I have gotten married, had a child, and found a career.  I am actually where my parents were at my age as they had their first child when my mom was 29. In the next thirty years (well, more like 8) I would love to have at least two more children and also remodel/reform our house.  I am happy where we are at, though, and if nothing really changes, I would be ok with that.

I have made some wonderful friends and have even managed to stay in contact with a lot of friends from childhood.  It helps when you are from a small town and when your mother is a teacher in that town.  I have seen a lot of people come and go from the community I live in now (foreign teachers  have a HIGH turnover rate) and have really been influenced by a wide variety of nationalities.

I have managed to read an amazing amount of books and have even read many books over and over.  But there are still so many out there yet for me to read.  Hopefully through book club I can find out about ones I have missed and hopefully I can make time for reading despite being a mom and a teacher.

Turning 30 is a little weird since both of my parents passed away in their early 60s.  If my life is like theirs', it is half over.  However, they lived quite full lives and managed to do a lot from 30 years on.  Some might be depressed at turning 30 and there are things that do make me sad.  I am sad that I will never really fit in at a dance club again and that I can't really be considered young anymore (although I guess to many I have been "old" for awhile- after all, a the majority of my students were born after 2000!).  My nights of reckless abandon are gone for good, and while I feel happy in being a parent and an adult, I will miss that thrill of staying out all night in strange cities with other young people.  Though I technically could still have the chance of moving somewhere foreign, for the most part I think the days of "real" traveling are over.

Turning 30 really makes me think that I need to be better about really making the best of my holidays, my money, etc  At this age in life it is easy to just go day to day looking at the small picture- what I am making for dinner, what part of the house needs to be cleaned, etc  Life is short and there is still so much more to see, so much more to do.  I am lucky that I have a fairly decent career that allows for me to travel, and that I have a husband that let's me go where I want when I want.  I hope that the next thirty years are just as good as the past thirty years, or even better.