Two ships crossing in the night

I should have expected it, but my travel schedule has not calmed down a single bit since starting my masters program.  It irritates me a bit because I did an enormous amount of traveling in Sept/Oct in order to get all of my trips out of the way through January.  But with my new responsibilities come new travels, which is how I found myself in Scotland last week presenting to a rather hostile large group of people (!) and in Hanover this week at a trade show. (As a side note: The night train from Paris to Berlin is not nearly as nice as you'd think it would be...)  But looking at my calendar, I basically have a trip planned for every week between now and Christmas, including one to visit a potential customer in Turkey.

Normally I would be excited to visit so many different countries, but some of the excitement has worn off now that I am married. I no longer have a strong desire to stay an extra day or arrive early in order to have time to look around. Spending time with C just seems more important than everything else, and even more so now that he is traveling for his job too. The timing has been bad as of late, and he has been coming as I have been going or vice versa, and it seems like we never see each other.  And my weekend classes are cutting short the few days we do have together.

Both of us are dedicated employees and we're still working on how to have fulfilling careers and yet not sacrifice too much of our personal life. I try to remind myself that we are lucky to both have such good jobs, but on the other hand, I don't think both of us traveling for work is something that is sustainable for a long period. Maybe someone else out there has successfully made a go of it and can give us some advice?  When you think about it, it's actually kind of funny that we find ourselves in this situation in France, land of the supposed 35h work week...

I did have a little bit of time to do some sightseeing in Edinburgh though, and it was a lovely city - definitely worth going back for a long weekend.  Unfortunately I never did find an Asda to buy some of their "mexican cheddar" that I love so much, but I did get some shredded cheddar and some caramel shortbread from M&S (plus the obligatory pub stop with a meal of fish & chips).

 

See, I told you it was lovely!