Be BrAve

Hello World and Welcome to the Adventures of BrAve!

I am Bridger and this is my husband David, and we decided to Be BrAve and take the Rhodes less traveled.  This is our story:

My passion for travel was ignited in the summer of 2008.  I was 21 years old and had only been on an airplane once…crazy, right?  That summer I (over)packed my bags, boarded my first international flight, and headed off to the UK.  I cried the whole way there.  I was terrified.

Four months flew by and after getting sufficiently lost in every big city I visited (I’m looking at you Paris), running out of money multiple times, and soaking up every bit of food and culture I could, I cried the entire flight back.  The travel bug bit me, and it bit hard.  It has been the perennial itch that no matter how far I traveled or how many adventures I went on, just would not be scratched.

David, on the other hand, comes from a family of travelers.  His mother is fluent in multiple languages and has traveled the world many times over.  His younger brother is currently living and working in Shanghai.  David had already explored the US and been to Europe multiple times before he graduated high school.  He didn’t have to be bitten; travel is in his blood.

We met in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the summer of 2009.  We immediately bonded over our love for sports (go Heels!), Star Wars, and all things nerdy. Living paycheck to paycheck, at that time, traveling the world was a dream…literally.  Fast forward 7 years and several jobs (and additional college degrees) later and we were getting married and planning our first international trip together:  NEW ZEALAND!

(Check out my blog post about our awesome honeymoon in New Zealand here)

From the moment we returned, we knew we wanted to go international.  But how?  We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but after a lot of hard work and a bit of (David’s) good luck, he was offered a position on a project in Kazakhstan.  We pondered and debated…and many questions needed to be answered – the most pressing being ‘what in the world was I going to do?’….

And here is your answer!