Boston to Denver to PHILADELPHIA!

C: After a big welcome back to America in Boston we headed to Denver for some quality time with the family.  A too short week spent with my lovely sisters, nephews and brother-in-law, and a great lunch with the Johnsons.  

The first rain we've ever seen in Denver

A very happy 3rd birthday for my nephew

His favorite book

A great week of fourth of July fun and birthday party magic and it was time to head back home.  After a very nostalgic lay over in the Cleveland Airport (which I'm convinced has always and will always smell like cinnamon rolls) we finally landed in Philadelphia.  HOME.

Settling back into Tyca it's crazy to think we were here a little more than 9 months ago getting married.

E: I think we both are feeling that everything about the trip felt very well timed. We were undoubtedly feeling quite sentimental during out last few days abroad, trying to process the fact that there would be no more hostels or camping or figuring out how the heck to get across a new foreign city with nothing but a poorly labeled free map and an address in a foreign language (and a compass). After nine months, 23 countries, countless different beds and countless more incredible (and occasionally far less than incredible) meals and snacks, the predominant feeling for us has been that we've just been fantastically fortunate to be able to pull this off (with so many thanks to everyone who helped us make it happen) and are now simply enjoying rejoining our families and friends with all sorts of summer-y goodness.

What better way to kick off our Philly-return with the Strathmann family's 10th annual Capture the Flag/Pig Roast (3rd year with the full pig). It's great to get back to cooking, and after an almost too perfect to be true upcoming 2 weeks in New Hampshire, we'll both be happy to get back to our old apartment and back to work. But in the meantime, we're going to soak up every ounce of this good, humid American summer.

A rainy 6:45am wake up to put the pig on

Flipping the pig, 5+ hours in

Players

Spectators

Off comes the pig

10+ hours of crispy deliciousness

E&C:  It's hard to know how to end this blog and really how to end this trip.  We've gone around the entire globe (and then some with our added on trip to Denver) in less than 9 months and we're almost unable to comprehend how to really come back.  We feel incredibly lucky to have had this opportunity and to have such wonderful friends and family who helped us out with this trip--  thank you all again, it's hard to imagine having a more loving community to return to.

That's all (for now).
Thanks for reading and lots of love,
Cindhu & Elliot

Lisbon to Boston!

Aaaaaand we're back! After along day of flights/waiting around for a billion hours in an airport in the Azores (I think I would have guessed they were in the S. Pacific if you had asked me a few months ago), we were finally back Stateside. We had a gracious pick up from old college friends Nick & Robyn (Thanks Nick & Robyn) and enjoyed a lovely few late night, how-the-heck-are-we-still-up, hours sharing the giant Toblarone bar (the perfunctory thank you for an airport pick up) and some Duty-Free whiskey along my brother Luke and girl Larkin. After a full day back, complete with 45 minute brunch lines, enormous food portions, beer + sports in a bar that has large screen TVs occupying just about any spot of the wall you could try to look at (although we were watching the Eurocup Spain/Italy final - which was a fun tie up after watching a bunch of preliminary rounds IN Spain), home cooked burgers (fi-na-lly) + cheap American beer in a can (if any foreigner ever tries to rag on American beer, know that there is just as much awful, absurdly cheep, mildly alcoholic swill over there, you just can't find it in 30-packs at mind boggling deals), marble birthday cake with impressively neat, loopy cursive "Happy Birthday Lukey!" inscription (happy birthday again, dude!), and many other wonderful little American moments on a muggy east-coast city summer day. There will be plenty of time for bigger scale reflections on national identity and mining of the tiniest of cultural idiosyncrosies (like the fact that our toilet bowls seem to hold an absolutely enormous amount of water in their non-flushing state - the telling differences among different national toilet-style trends have numerous fascinating implications), in the meantime, overwhelming nostalgia and constant rush of thousands of different memories aside, it's great to be back! We're on to Denver tonight for a week with Cindhu's family (so maybe not completely "back," let's call it the home stretch), which with any luck will be ripe with expansive national parks, grilling, and plenty of fireworks.

Somebody's excited to turn 24!

Huge quantities of brunch leftovers and gas half the price of any other western country. Sweet.