1,000th BLOG!!!!

If you had told me on February 2, 2008 -- while I was typing my first blog at JFK airport, waiting to fly to Syndey -- that I would eventually type 999 more entries, there's no chance I would have believed you. No, I definitely wouldn't have believed that over the course of nearly three years I would write 1,000 blogs. I also wouldn't have believed a heck of a lot of other things that have happened to me over the last 1,043 days.

I surely wouldn't have believed that I'd be robbed by ninjas during my first week in Hanoi. It also would have seemed unbelievable that I'd get detained overnight with two friends for accidentally going into the "frontier zone" near Laos. I also wouldn't have believed that my friends and family would have donated enough money to Habitat for Humanity to build two families' houses. I might have believed that I'd make some good friends but I would have doubted that I'd make as many as I have in not only Vietnam, but also amazing friends in Japan. I surely wouldn't have believed that I'd open my own school which would seem just about as likely as being evicted from a house (both which happened). I also wouldn't have believed that through the blog I was typing I would meet so many people and keep such a detailed account of my adventures. I definitely would not have believed that my parents would come to visit me in Vietnam twice, especially considering my mother's aversion to flying. Also, there's no way I would have believed that I'd end up spending nearly triple the amount of time in Asia that I had originally planned. But clearly, the most unbelievable thing someone could have told me while waiting for my flight to Australia over thirty months ago, was that I was going to be marrying the love of my life in a small village in the Vietnamese countryside. Yeah, I definitely would not have seen that one coming.

I guess if there is a lesson to be learned through my first 1,000 blogs it's this: Always keep an open mind because everything is possible -- and that's a truly amazing thing.