Resilience and Traveling

posted by Beth:

This last month my husband and I were fortunate enough to travel away from our snowy climate to the warmth of Australia. Despite our excitement about getting away from the responsibilities of our jobs and the snow that was falling in our home town, we found that life was still not perfect.

To start the trip we had travel problems due to the weather. It took us 7 hours to get from Denver to Los Angeles. Fortunately we had a late night flight leaving LA so all worked out except for the anxiousness of wondering whether we would make our connection.

The weather in Australia was not the sunny 75 degrees we had expected. Instead it was a wet 55 degrees for four days straight. We found that we had not packed the appropriate clothing for this type of weather. But, ever-resourceful, we quickly found rain jackets and umbrellas and we continued touring.

Australia has been experiencing a drought so the when the sun did shine we were besought with flies. Annoying but manageable.

Our "misadventure" continued when we arrived in Melbourne to find that the hotel reservations we had so diligently made in advance were not on the hotel docket. We found ourselves scrambling to find a place to stay that night. Happily, we found a better, less expensive hotel closer to the center of the city.

In retrospect all of these problems were just blips on the screen. We were able to deal with each of them as they arrived and did not let any of them affect our trip. In fact now they actually are a part of the fabric of the story we tell about our wonderful trip. We didn’t let the Australian flies dictate our activity and I now am the proud owner of a beautiful Australian rain jacket.