Seven years ago today, I sat in my office in Shoup Hall at the University of Idaho and wrote my first blog post. The walls were made of cinder block painted off-white. I’d moved from Boulder, Colorado just the previous summer and was thrilled at the prospect of staying in touch via blogs. I was missing Home, and my people.

More miles than anyone should count and at least 36 countries and territories later, here’s the last post for XpatAdventures:

Spring has arrived in Zurich. Birds are chirping everywhere and sun is pouring through the living room windows, making it far warmer inside than out.

Tomorrow I need to remember to close the blinds so it’s cooler for Mufasa. I can’t believe he’s been on this entire journey with me. It’s clear his time is coming to an end – he walks slowly up the path from the door and pants after just a few steps. It’s tough for him to stand and sit, but he still looks at me with a hint of mischief in his eyes and comes to find me when he’s hungry for dinner. He sniffs his way around the neighborhood, eyes glazed over with a greenish shine, his hearing not as sharp as it once was.

In Boulder, when we told him we were getting divorced, my stepson said: “Now we can stop struggling.” and “If Dad gets me, you get the dog.” It’s been 56 dog years since we left Colorado, since I packed him into the back of my silver Nissan Pathfinder and drove away from our entire life.

Mufasa was only six to eight weeks old when we met at the Boulder Humane Society. Sometimes people call dogs from places like that “rescue dogs.” I’m not sure who saved whom.

I didn’t know when we set out that there’d be this much change and isolation for so long. I sought to make a home and family again. Instead I have seen so much of the world, met and connected amazing changemakers & committed souls, and explored terrain (internal & external) rocky & steep.

I stay in touch with friends in Colorado as if it’s been just a few weeks, as if I never left. Their lives there continued and mine didn’t. Andrew Love, a great writer, speedskater, father and friend said it’s kind-of like time dilation in science fiction books. “You drop in all world-weary and tired from your travels and our lives have moved on – we’ve had kids and gotten new jobs and made new friends; people have died – but you haven’t gone through that with us. We pick up where we left off; you’re the same as back then, and we haven’t seen the world with you.”

I want to say every day to the people I love: I wish I could bring you with me and that I could stay with you. There’s this strange pull of Home and a longing to see and do everything, everywhere, all at once.

I wish that I could say after all these years I have figured it out, solved the riddle of Home.

For now, I am savoring these last days with Mufasa – the only one who’s seen it all. For now, Home is where Mufasa is.

He’s not going quietly into this dark night. I don’t blame him.

He has stood on the side of the Matterhorn contemplating chasing herding sheep. (That’s what he’s doing here…)

He’s been to the top of the Jungfrau:

He’s taken the car ferry across Lake Como to a five-star hotel in Bellagio, Italy… more than once.

He’s visited the beautiful Munich Christmas market… and didn’t see a thing but scored *lots* of discarded pretzel and bratwurst.

He’s treed a cat on the grounds of a 16th century Tuscan villa and stood poolside victorious. The soundtrack for this next photo should be “We are the Champions;” he is standing proud for all dogs, everywhere.

It’s an amazing 12-year journey we’ve been on together: Here’s the story of how Mufasa came into my life. (Warning: cute puppy photos) Here’s a guest post from him back when we lived in Lugano. Here’s the post from when he had cancer in 2008.

And here’s a tidbit from more recently, December 2011:

“Ladies and Gentlemen… Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable then my own meandering experience.”

- Mary Schmich (made famous by fab ’90s song by Baz Luhrmann – watch here!)

Just removed the steristrips and saw the stitches for the first time. Though surgeon was hot and great fun, I’d rather have worn sunscreen and not had this experience. Sunscreen, people. Sunscreen. Any color, even a nice tan, is an indication of damage to your skin.

Slow Saturday. Snow falling. Big dog’s had 10 good days in a row and is walking up ahead. (Can you see him on the path below? He blends in.) This is all I need right now.

I’ve been thinking about this photo lately. It’s my 95-year-old Mema, her daughter (my Mom) and me this past summer. We’re at a benefit at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando. The Florida Bar Foundation was honoring my Mom’s work with Teen Courts nationwide.

My Mom is Mema’s youngest. She had her when she was about 30. I’m my Mom’s youngest; she had me when she was 24. My Mom and I spend a lot of time together since I moved to Switzerland… she’s here months of every year. She is by far my favorite travel companion. No one else eats anywhere near enough. This is ironic; she is tiny. They make me look so tall! (I am 5’4″.)

I’ve been thinking about what we have in common and what’s different about our lives.

In a recent conversation with my Mema she said, “I wish I knew how long I had left so I cold make more plans. Right now I can’t plan past this trip to Vegas.”

Chalk that up to something we have in common: the Adventurer Gene.

Mema also loves to dance and have a good time; that we have in common, too.

Our lives have been so different, though. In some ways I think her 90s are Mema’s best decade. She’s doing pretty much anything she wants. No ailing husband to care for (God rest their souls), no kids to raise, she reads everything she can get her hands on and emails and watches tv and eats whatever and whenever she wants. She has three suitors and runs an alterations business out of her apartment. She’s a gifted painter.

“I started drinking caffeinated coffee after your visit,” she told me.

“Do you sleep?”

“Well, no. Not so much. Some nights I just sing all night long… you know, all the songs I want to perform.”

That’s something Mema and I have in common: the singing and performance gene. It skipped a generation.

What’s interesting to note, though, and points to what I’d like to see XpatAdventures become, is this: Mema is breaking trail now, calling the shots, charting her own course in her 90s and it’s really the first time she’s had the means and luxury to do so alone.

My Mom needed to go find her way, her path, her route when I left home and she was in her early 40s (God bless my Dad who said to her, “I can’t do it for you, you have to go find your own thing.”) She found Teen Court and has built them across the United States, serving thousands of kids and families in need.

Me? I’ve been calling my own shots my whole life. In my twenties I guess I was still trying to do things Right, be a Good Girl, follow the normal, acceptable route. Then things happened.

I believe there comes a time when each of us realizes life as we planned it is not going to turn out. Some come to it through tragedy, others through disappointment, still others when the upward trajectory just has nowhere left to go.

We’re each left wondering, “What now?” and have an opportunity to chart an authentic, fulfilling course for ourselves.

That’s what I’d like XpatAdventures to be about. It doesn’t have to mean you’re single like me (or that I’ll stay single forever). It doesn’t have to mean you have kids or not, or a high-paying career or not, or a calling you want to chuck everything for.

It’s about: in this day and age each one of us, no matter what, will likely reach a day when it’s time to carve our own, unique, authentic course. Maybe your husband tells you you need to do it for yourself; maybe you realize if you don’t you’re going to go nuts, or you will have reached the end and never done the thing your heart longed for.

The question is the same. I’d like to help each of us answer it:

What’s your adventure?

That’s what I’ll be working on here over the next few months…

So I have a new New Year’s tradition… this video-making. Here’s the link to 2010′s year-in-photos review. 2011′s voiceover is a little homespun. I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.

There are so many more people and places, moments and memories that could also have been included: Skeet shooting in Texas, walking Paris with my best college buddy (we hadn’t seen one another in 13 years), eating Mexican food with friends in Pasadena, countless photos from Rio de Janeiro, China, Botswana, TED events, Switzerland and Italy.

There wasn’t room for all of it. The world, this life… they’re full and big.

2011 in Review from Rebecca Self on Vimeo.

Work took me to 4 continents this year. Thank you to Zoran and the TNM Coaching crew & Dana and the Trestle Group Foundation.

If you’d like to see my personal list of some things learned, things I’m grateful for, and what’s next – that’s here.

Here’s a quick list of best Hotels, Meals & Travel Experiences of 2011:

Hotels I could live in (the very Best of 2011):

• Waldhotel Doldenhorn, Kandersteg, Switzerland
• Comwell Borupgaard, Snekkersten, Denmark
• La Toretta Lake Resort, Lake Conroe, outside Houston, Texas
• Apartments behind Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy
• The Admiral Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark

Honorable Mentions:

• Regal Master Hotel, Chengdu, China (for food)
• Gaylord Palms, Orlando

Best Meals of 2011:

• Christmas dinner at the Waldhotel Doldenhorn
• safari dinners
• Chengdu, China hot pot with locals (for the adventure, not the food)
• sampling noodles at the Bangkok night market (Soi 38 maybe?)
• some big animal roasting on a spit roadside Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Nevermind the vomiting next day. What an adventure!)
• As always: Locanda dell’isola Comacina in Lake Como. It is a perennial favorite. Who wants to go in 2012?
• High tea at the Royal Livingstone Hotel, Zambia (Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved it. Will never forget the monkey swiping a scone, running like a wild banshee across the lawn holding his little fist high above his head.)

Finally, I leave you with this quote from a poem, “In The End,” by Tara Sophia Mohr (it’s in the video, too):

Dim Sum

Want great Dim Sum in Hong Kong off the beaten path, outside of the three or four places recommended on all the Web sites? Try Chung’s Cuisine, One Kowloon, 1 Wang Yuen Street, Kowloon Bay. It’s in a huge office building, so mid-week lunches are busy. I’ve heard it’s crowded even on the weekends. Best with a big group so you can try lots of dishes!

Massage while you wait for your flight

Second massage this year at the Traveler’s Lounge, Hong Kong Airport and it was even better than the first. This place is the best deal going. I got in free this time with my frequent flier membership. Arrive on an empty stomach – there’s a great noodle soup station with fish balls, fish cakes, and all the fixings you need. Internet access (kind-of spotty) is included in the entrance price, too. I go early to the airport just to go to this lounge. Can get overcrowded, unfortunately.

Bad Hotel

This trip the company booked me at the Harbour Plaza Metropolis. Yuck! Creepy dirty (hair in shower & bed), tiny room, far from everything. Last trip I was at the Sheraton and will go back there again next time. The club floor included some laundry service, good food and a great view from the lounge of the nightly light show in the harbour. It was worth the upgrade fee.

I’d like to go back and explore the area around Hong Kong more – I bet there’s great hiking & good beaches not too far away. It’s a fascinating place.

It was billed the “Game of the Century.” Last Saturday 160,000 people were in the tiny town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama for it. My father and I were 2 of them. It was my first Alabama football game since childhood.

We didn’t have a whole lot of Jesus in my house as a kid… we had Bear Bryant. My Dad, descended from Methodist ministers, pretty much worships at the altar of Alabama football.

His great, great grandfather Isaac Self moved to Alabama in 1817. The University was established the same year the Trail of Tears began: 1831. Skip ahead 131 years and my Dad was a Phi Delta Theta on campus; his first-born, a son, was born the November day Alabama beat in-state rival Auburn for the 1964 National Championship. It’s a small miracle he wasn’t named Bama. Really.

After Blank Slating, I’ve been filling the white space of life with what’s important to me. It’s been made up of quiet moments in the woods near home with my sweet giant of a dog. With going to a football game with my Dad. With laughter on calls with old friends, with good simple food and rewarding work. I’ve got a related post up over at Gypsy Girls Guide. Check that site out, won’t you? The women there are amazing.

Oh. And “Roll Tide!” even though we lost. The whole experience was a win for me.

Last weekend Mufasa and I went up in to the mountains to hike and hang out with a gang of friends. The village was tiny. It took a bus, two trains and a lift from someone to get up there. This is what you need to know about Hasliberg at night: it’s DARK… and noisy. ‘Gives a whole new meaning to “tie one on.”

“It is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure. ”  ― Alice Walker

This is how Sundays should look:

Wake up happy and give thanks. Check.

Delight in good people, fine food, beautiful weather. Check.

Run a little, walk a lot in great big woods. Marvel at the seasons changing. Check.

Laugh out loud at the old dog’s antics. Check.

Have faith. Check.

Only thing better would be you here with us.

Yes, you.

“Oh, she say. God loves all them feelings. That’s some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves ‘em you enjoys ‘em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that’s going, and praise God by liking what you like.” – Alice Walker, The Color Purple