A Clean Slate

Oh hey! It’s been a loooonnng time since last I wrote. I could say I’m sorry, but I’m really not. Life has been absolutely nuts, and I’m here to fill you in on all the dirty details. I took well over a month off from blogging, and I’m back with a brand spankin new site design (still working out the bugs and have yet to design a few pages so don’t judge too harshly), a new chapter of life, and a new author for LIAL!

How’s that in a nutshell?

So where should we start? Let’s start at the beginning of the change, which happened to be late March. Derik and I were in a constant state of discussion as to what our future held, and although we had/will always have a major love for New Zealand, we were ready to get back on the road and put some serious milage under our feet. It was time to move on to a mobile chapter of our lives. Jumping in feet first to full-time travel writer positions, we look forward to seeing where our adventures (and this blog) will take us! We literally only have two backpacks and a military-grade duffle bag with us, so we’re basically good to go anywhere. We have the next few months planned out, but after that? We’ll just have to wait and see. I know some people hate uncertainty, and trust me, I deal with a fair share of stress over it, but in the end I know this adventure will be our wildest one yet.

I can just hear the questions swirling around in your head about how the heck we afford this lifestyle, what we will be doing on a day to day basis, and if we have plans for a future permanent residence, and I promise we will answer all of those as soon as we can in detail.

New Chapter:

Derik and I officially began our new adventure May 30th, and we tearfully said goodbye to our adorable little beach house in Dunedin, and headed out on a 16 day New Zealand adventure trip with Haka Tours. I’ll talk about the trip extensively in future blog posts, but for now all you need to know is that it was absolutely phenomenal and one of our best memories of New Zealand! It was also a great way to say goodbye to our favorite country we’ve ever lived in.

After our tour was over, we hopped on a plane bound for Bali! We’re still here, and have been running around like crazy promoting some amazing locations, and look forward to sharing our experiences on the blog in a few weeks! The internet has been absolutely atrocious here, so the fact that I’m able to write this post is beyond a miracle. I’ve rarely had the opportunity to check my emails. First world problems eh? I guess when your job [aka $$$] literally depends on the fact that you have internet, it can be stressful not finding any.

Site Design:

As far as the LIAL’s design goes, I’ve been wanting to revamp for a while, and as always, I wanted a simpler, cleaner, more minimalist design that helps us feature our travel photographs. My last design was on the Avada framework, and I wasn’t too thrilled with it. I decided to revert back to Genesis (my favorite framework to design and develop on), and I added a few little unique additions to the design that I think add a little character and style. I still have a few things on my list for the LIAL revamp, so go easy on me while I update pages, create a bit more coding, and make sure everything looks good on all devices this next week.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

New Author on LIAL:

Last but not least, Living in Another Language has a new author! I’ve mentioned before that Derik was going to start contributing to the blog later this year, and part of the redesign included adding him as an author. He’s still in the brainstorming part of the writing process, but you’ll be seeing posts from Derik within the next few weeks. Get excited! I’m so thankful to have such a wonderful partner in life, and he’s super awesome at so many things! I look forward to reading his posts and what he has to say on the subject of travel, and I hope you do too! The post author will be clearly marked at the top and at the bottom of each post so there (hopefully) isn’t much confusion. If you have any suggestions to help ease Derik into being an author on a previously one-author blog, let me know! I’m always open to suggestions.

That’s all I have for you now, and if you’re wanting the latest and most current updates on our travel adventures, be sure to follow us on Instagram (@livinginanotherlanguage || @x_journeyman) and Facebook.

Thanks for sticking with us!