So… who are we?
Andrew and I met early on in our freshman year at Saint Vincent College through mutual friends. He was studying biochemistry and I was studying business management. If it weren’t for this friend group, I am not sure that we would have crossed paths even though SVC is a smaller school. We started dating about a year after we first met and dated for five years before getting married at our Alma Mater in September of 2019. We realized that we both had a strong passion for new places and experiences through some of our travels within the United States over the years we dated, but this really surfaced when we started to plan our honeymoon to Italy in the months leading up to our wedding. We had so much fun traveling through Italy on our honeymoon (and trying our best to stick to our budget) that when we came home, we immediately booked our next trip to Paris, France and Brussels, Belgium. It was after these two trips that we decided that we would pay off our student loans and my car as soon as we possibly could in order to save for our trip around the world, not knowing exactly when the time for leaving would be right. “Luckily” for us, Covid hit right as we made this decision, essentially forcing us to stay put for a while and work and save.
Before taking on this new adventure of full-time travel, Andrew was employed as a Scientist at a microbiology laboratory and Ivy was employed as a Software Quality Analyst at a bank. While we both enjoyed our work enough to have stayed for a longer amount of time, we knew that this was the BEST time to take a break from the corporate world and travel while we were only responsible for ourselves- plus we worked really hard to get to this point! It was definitely hard to leave the familiarity of a work schedule behind, but both of our places of employment were thrilled for what was to come for us. So far, our three weeks of (f)unemployment have been great.
Other than what we did for work, we could be found spending our free time exploring our home city of Pittsburgh, PA, spending quality time with our families (especially our siblings), hanging out with our friends, or relaxing in our home with our cat named Callie. I guess my statement above wasn’t completely true. We do have one major responsibility besides caring for ourselves. Our cat Callie, my best friend while working from home the past five years, is now adapting to her new life at my parent’s house, where I am told that she is already Queen of the household.
Neither Andrew or I have ever been away from our home or families for more than two weeks at a time, so this is a HUGE adjustment for us. Thankfully we have built in some weeks back in the USA to visit with family and friends and of course to be in my brother’s wedding in August. We are also really excited that some friends, as well as my sister are going to join us in some of our travels!