Sweden -- to Tennessee?

Yes I’m as shocked as you are, but Russell’s first business trip will be to Tennessee. After going to the country music capital, he’ll take more high-profile trips to Santiago, Chile, and then Lima, Perú.


But the best part is I’ll be able to see him in Nashville during a three-day weekend in April. While going to Latin America sounds more appealing, especially since a good friend and future bridesmaid is in the Peace Corps in Perú, I’ll settle for the less expensive while planning for a wedding choice. Plus, since it’ll be five weeks since we’ve seen each other at that point, I can guarantee we’ll be more focused on spending time together than local sightseeing.

We’re now approaching the three-week mark since he left for Sweden on March 6, and it reminds me of when I was in India for a month this past February for a Group Study Exchange. An Indian we met told us about when he went on a GSE trip to Brazil, and it was during the third week that it got really difficult for him, especially since he wasn’t able to communicate much with his hosts. His hostess was playing the piano one night during that week, and he joined her, and then he started crying and she did as well. It was their way of communicating through music, despite the language barrier.

OK – so nothing dramatic like that has happened, but I will forever call times when you miss someone you’ve been away from for three weeks or more “piano moments.”

Creating the blog during our third week apart is significant because I have been missing Russell more and more as the days go by, and the blog helps make this journey seem more real to me when I’m still living and working in the area I only left for a long period during college.

So in a sense, the blog is my way of coping with those pesky third-week piano moments. But I’ll continue to blog in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned.