Everyone’s world has turned upside down in the last two weeks. Nothing is the same. We’re all dealing with the impact of COVID-19 in different ways. I stopped writing my blog posts about our trip to New Zealand. I was torn about what I should do. My plan for 2020 had been to transition from parenting articles to travel writing but clearly no one will be traveling anywhere for some time. In fact, many of us may not be leaving our homes for weeks or even months. Given this, I wondered if it would it be insensitive (oblivious?) to continue to share my enthusiastic impressions and memories of our group’s carefree and pleasurable experiences from just two weeks ago. This question bothered me greatly-hence the lapse in my posting. After talking to a few friends and doing some soul-searching, I’m going to go ahead and finish my posts. This is why. I’ve always found that, when times are bad, walls are closing in, options are drying up, and it seems like you can’t catch a break no matter what you do-that’s when we most need to nurture our hopes and dreams for the future. Everyone needs something to look forward to; that’s what gets us out of bed in the morning. So, I invite you to journey with my sister and me to New Zealand, if only in your imagination! Hopefully my travel posts and photos will get you thinking about how and why you travel. Maybe they will spark your own curiosity enough to envision places you’ve always wished you could visit, people you’d like to meet, and cultures and foods you want to try. Why not take a chance and start planning a holiday that’s off the beaten path or out of your comfort zone? If you had asked me two years ago if I would fly halfway across the world for a week’s vacation, I might have laughed it off. Yet that’s what I just did. Life may be a lot of things, but it’s never predictable… We will get through this crisis together. Eventually we will be ready to start traveling and exploring the world we live in again. Maybe this time with a new understanding of what it means to be a global citizen on this planet. Now, on to Waiheke Island!