Ty's World Trek

Last night, the skies opened up and released two weeks of built up rain on a parched land.  It was torrential. For about 30 minutes it hammered down on the sky lights in the staff quarters of the hotel and golf course I’ve been staying and working.  When the sound of the rain pelting the glass above subsided, I opened the door and stepped out into the cool air.  It reminded me of my home in Alaska. I closed my eyes and could have sworn I was standing at Ward Lake or Brown Mountain.

There were puddles in the gravel driveway of the building I stay in, an old stable converted to housing. The trees nearby were still trickling water down from their leaves.  It was evening, nearly 8 o’clock, and the hotel didn’t have many guests, so all was quiet.  Being summer, the July sun was still up, though starting to sink. It wouldn’t’ be fully dark till around 10:30 pm or “Half Ten” as they said over here. The sky was an ominous grey and there were showers pelting down in the distance.

One of the chefs came around the corner of the building opposite the driveway and noticed me.  He told me that the staff dinner was nearly done and would be out in a few minutes.  He was staring off in the distance and motioned for me to come and see.  He is from Ukraine and spoke with a thick accent but I was able to make out clearly what he said next.

“Double Rainbow.”

I walked over and looked.  Sure enough an extremely bright rainbow with a few lighter sub rainbows was standing out against the grey sky behind my own building.  I hadn’t seen a rainbow that strong in quite a while, so I decided to grab a few pictures of it.  I ran back in and grabbed my camera and managed to snap a few shots of the rainbows.

I’ve been very busy this last week, between working on the golf course and trying to set up details for my next big move on this crazy adventure of randomness.  It looks like my next stop will be in France! A wildly different location, doing wildly different tasks than I am now!  If all goes according to plan, I will be in a rural town occupied by William the Conqueror, helping to teach English to school children! Building up quite the patch work resume, aren’t I?

I’ve also contacted a school in Russia about coming to do the same in Moscow later in the year.  This is a big step as that leg of the journey has been very troublesome. The VISA process to enter Russia is quite complex, and usually is done from your country of residence.  The real problem for me has been they want EXACT dates that you will be there, and the way my adventure is set up, I don’t usually have that information.  I should have gotten the VISA while I was still back in the US, as it is easier (Apparently) to get the VISA from your home country, but live and learn.  I have seen people that have done it from abroad, it just ends up taking longer.

So that is wonderful news on my adventure! Two puzzle pieces starting to fit together.

I’ve also been busy working to build a website for a client, something that helps pay for my adventures, but can be quite difficult to do from 9 time zones away.

All in all it has been a pretty good week. I’ve gotten to chat with friends and family back home, made some new steps on my travel itinerary, and done a lot of marketing to help get my adventures out there to people.  I will be hitting 1500 twitter followers soon, which may not make me the most followed travel blogger around, but it is a far cry from when I set out 7 months ago!  Thank you to all my regular readers and followers.  I appreciate your views, your contributions, questions and support.  Please, if you enjoy this site and stories, think about following on twitter, or liking on facebook, if you haven’t already, or sharing the page or this article if you already do!  Thanks again, keep checking back for new travel adventures!