“Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.”
~Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (via Luis Gonzalez)
Hello and thanks for joining us on our adventure. We are Jimmy and Alysia and have been together since 2000 and married since 2004. From the beginning of our relationship, we both enjoyed traveling. Our first trip together was a cruise around the Caribbean to celebrate our college graduations, and our honeymoon was a trip to the Tahitian islands Moorea and Huahine.
Jimmy standing by our overwater bungalow in Huahine
And a great view overlooking Moorea
As we continued to grow as a couple and grow in our careers, our desire to see more of the world and learn from different cultures also grew. After going to a few of our bucket list countries, our travel bug just got stronger, and we both knew that living abroad was the only way to cure it.
Petting a Kangaroo √
Exploring small European cities √
Visiting the fjords and glaciers in New Zealand √
We took a few years to figure out how to fit our personal goals and career goals with our travel ambitions, but now, we have finally been able to make our dream a reality and started our adventure in July 2016. We sold or donated all of our belongings and have started living a location independent lifestyle. As NextGen Nomads, we are a bit different than the typical backpacker or around the world traveler, especially given the new technology available today. We both work in the science industry – Alysia has a PhD in genetics and works for a genetic diagnostics company (analyzing NextGen sequencing data, of course) and Jimmy has an MBA and works in stem cell product development.
Working remotely and traveling the world while in the science industry is quite rare, so we were both fortunate to be able to keep our science jobs part-time while pursuing our dream. Because we are still working for companies in the United States, we are taking our world travel at a more leisurely pace – living in most cities for about a month. Our accommodations will primarily be AirBnB apartments as our goal is to live in each city and truly experience the culture and, of course, the food.
Alysia munching on a wild boar sandwich and enjoying some wine at our favorite little sandwich/wine stand in Florence, Italy (I Due Fratellini)
Jimmy excited to be eating gelato at the #1 spot in Italy in San Gimignano
Here we are toasting the sunset in Uluru, Australia
Because of our past habits of eating a lot on vacation and not taking the time to exercise (Hey, it is vacation after all), Alysia is notorious for putting on 10-15 lbs during 2-3 week vacations. Part of our adventure now will include finding local gyms or new unique ways to exercise if we don’t have access to the amenities we are used to. We want to make sure we come back to the United States still looking like this:
Jimmy on the dock entrance to our resort in Huahine, Tahiti
Alysia embracing her inner gladiator at the Coliseum in Rome
We feel very fortunate that innovative travel tools like AirBnB and a more relaxed remoting work culture have allowed us this amazing opportunity, and we hope to inspire more people to join us in this next generation of travel and living abroad to bring our world closer together. So, please follow along on our journey, and we hope to provide some interesting insight into the places that we live as well as some humor as we know things will not always go as expected. We hope to share with you more exotic animals…
exotic foods…
and exotic places.
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