Another awesome year is gone! But you know what they say, out with the old and in with the new, and Fletch and I are very, veryveryvery ready to say our goodbyes to Palau. The travel bug is itching and new adventures are calling. A whole year on a rock in the middle of nothing but ocean has given us both a bad case of the island fever. This is a new sensation for me.

I know the blog has been a little stagnant as of late and for that I do apologize. My writing is inspired by new experiences and discoveries through my travels and as of late we have fallen into a bit of mundane routine. There just isn’t much left to discover in this tiny nation. (I feel as though I’m betraying the spirit of travel by saying that. The horror!) The locals continue to spit their blood red betel nut juice all over the place and the Chinese tourists continue to take selfie after selfie. The diving never ceases to awe but I’m sure you can only read about the hundreds of sharks at Blue Corner so many times. The fact that the internet is too slow to post any descent photos or videos doesn’t exactly help either.

Our departure date is set for January 22 and from here we fly to a city that a well-known author described in his latest book as being “the gates of hell.” This sparked some outrage from the country and prompted the city’s chairman to respond, saying he was disappointed by the inaccurate portrayal of a beloved metropolis. The chairman then stated that the city was, in fact, “an entry to heaven.” Any guesses? Post them in the comments and stay tuned!

The next six or seven months will be spent traveling around to new places, and then by summertime we are heading back to a much beloved spot, hopefully with a year-long visa. I won’t spoil the surprises but know that oh-so-many new adventures are in store for 2016! I’m so excited!

So what have we been doing these past few months? I have been busy with yoga teacher training. I finished my 100-hour certification with flying colors (not to brag or anything) and am now trying to squeeze in my 200-hour certification before we depart. I am about halfway through the hours and mostly there on the knowledge portion except for the chakras. Oh the chakras. They really tripped me up for a while because they are just a little too pseudo-sciency for me to wrap my head around. What are chakras you ask? The literal translation of the sanskrit word is a wheel or disk. In the ancient Indian traditions there are seven spinning fields of energy in the body along the spine. Each must be open to live a healthy, happy life and have a connection with the divine. This is where I was drawing a blank. I can appreciate the spirituality of it but I wasn’t quite connecting to it. Then I started learning about what each individual chakra stands for and from a psychological perspective I can wrap my head around it a little bit better. For instance the root chakra is responsible for our survival instincts. The solar plexus chakra is responsible for our personality and confidence. The throat chakra is responsible for our communication. They are all just aspects of the human psyche. I can get behind that.

The rest of our time has been devoted to fostering three adorable little kittens. You may remember Pluto, the adult calico we tried to bring home who freaked out big time and we had to give her back. We went back several days in a row after that to check on her and make sure she was alright. During that time period Clara, the lady who runs the Cat House, had a new little kitten upstairs that she hadn’t introduced downstairs to the big cats yet. The day she was about to graduate Alexis, the kitten, downstairs, we told her we would take her home and raise her to be a house cat instead. Most cats here are outdoor cats, so we thought it would be nice to train a house cat for a forever home that was looking for that kind of pet.

Alexis turned out to be more of a Tinker Bell and so we renamed her. Her unique little face got all sorts of reactions from “the most beautiful kitten in the world” to “What is that thing? Half Spock?”

Tinker Bell

Tinker Bell stayed with us for about a month before a sweet Swiss girl who just moved to Palau adopted her. We still go over to visit sometimes. 

Tinker Bell is too busy contemplating the complexity of the speck on the wall to be bothered with selfies.

Tinker Bell was adopted when Fletch was on a trip back to the US, leaving me very lonely in this big house. I was all alone for a whole week before Clara called me out of the blue one day with the sort of request that’s just too good to be true. She told me that she was moving herself and the Cat House up north, which for a moment made me sad because I wouldn’t be able to just walk across the street and visit the kitties anymore. But then she told me that she had two little kittens, only a month old, too little to move, and would Fletch and I be willing to watch them for her while she was moving?

YIPPEE!

Who could ever say no to taking care of two little fur babies for a couple of weeks? And that’s how we ended up with Princess Leia and Princess Buttercup. 

Princess Buttercup on the top of the cuddle puddle and Princess Leia all stretched out.

Princess Leia is the more playful of the too. 

Princess Leia looking all adorable and sleepy.

Princess Buttercup is the more affectionate. We are also pretty sure that she is a little bit special. 

Princess Buttercup making funny faces.

And that’s also how Palau turned me into a crazy cat lady. Wow, I really need to get out of this place!