The Spirit of Santo

We arrived in the little town of Luganville on the northern Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo with only a vague idea of how we wanted to spend our time, but we knew there were some great scuba diving spots around the island (including the WWII-era shipwreck of the USS Calvin Coolidge), a few sandy beaches worth seeing (how could a place called Champagne Beach not be beautiful?), and one crazy cave that Lonely Planet highly recommended we check out.

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Shout-outs From the Road!

When Laura and I worked at Room to Read, one of our favorite traditions was the “shout-out”. At the end of every bi-weekly all-hands meeting, the meeting moderator would open up the floor for people to publicly thank one or more of their co-workers for going above and beyond the call of duty in some way. Usually it involved someone who spent extra time helping them with a project, or someone who took on a particularly tough or unpleasant task and finished it with a smile on their face. It was a great way for people’s extra hard work to be recognized in front of the entire San Francisco team, and it always felt good to get an “attaboy” from a co-worker every once it a while. In that same spirit, Laura and I would like to give a few shout-outs to friends and family members who have, in their own way, helped to make our trip thus far a positive, healthy, and fun experience.

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Packing It Up

One of the most common questions we got when we started telling people we were planning to travel for a year was, “How on earth are you going to pack for that?” The short answer, as it turns out, is very, very carefully.

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