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Looking back at 2019, it was not the easiest year for us. There were plenty of ups and downs and lots of unexpected things occurred that changed some of our plans.
2019 started off with a few trips to new cities, including Nashville and Houston. Both cities were great to travel to for long weekends. We tried to take advantage of our long weekends, one of the benefits of working in public education.
Nashville offered much more than country music and Woo! Girls on bachelorette parties on Broadway. While that’s what Nashville has become known for, there is so much more to do when visiting Music City. Check out our post on How to Spend a Long Weekend in Nashville to see what else the city has to offer. That is, of course, if you’re looking for more to do there than country bars on Broadway.
We ended up going to Houston for a long weekend in February to see one of Becca’s friends and were quite surprised by the city. Prior to Houston, we had only visited Austin in Texas before. Houston is SUPER spread out but had a lot of fun neighborhoods and things to do. Unfortunately, we haven’t written up a post on it yet, but it’s in the works…
Our spring break brought us to Belize for a week long trip. Belize was our primary destination, although we did go to Tikal, Guatemala for a day trip.
We chose Belize primarily because Southwest Airlines flies there from the United States. Plus, we have a Southwest Credit Card, and we wanted to keep collecting points!
Belize was a phenomenal trip that gave us the opportunity to see Mayan ruins, explore a cave where Mayans made human sacrifices, relax on the beach, and go snorkeling with sharks! You should definitely visit Belize if you are wanting a trip to a lesser known country that is filled with the opportunity for adventure. Check out our One Week Itinerary for Belize to help you plan your next trip!
Belize was our last big trip of 2019 though because we decided to really focus on saving money. Saving money was a big focus after Mike was in school working on his teaching license for two years, and we were considering a big move to another city…or country.
In looking at potentially moving, we had actually applied to teach English in Spain through the Auxiliares de Conversación Program, also known as the North American Language and Culture Assistant Program. We also looked at other cities we really like in the United States, like Denver and New York City, amongst others.
Unfortunately though, we had some very difficult personal stuff happen in the early summer of 2019 and decided it was best for us to stay in Milwaukee near family for now. This doesn’t rule anything out for the future, but it was the best decision for us for now. However, it was really difficult to make.
It was around this time that we took a break from MY Travel BF and didn’t blog much. However, we eventually got back on track and are blogging again while continuing our day jobs in the public schools. If you’re curious about everything that happened, here’s our blog post about why we stopped blogging for a while.
Once we decided to stay in Milwaukee, we made the decision to focus on spending time with our family and saving money for traveling and whatever we decide to do in the future.
We both got second jobs at local breweries and have been enjoying everything Milwaukee has to offer as well as spending time with our families. Being in the United States has allowed us to travel to friends’ weddings and be at other gatherings we might have otherwise missed. We are very thankful for having the opportunity to be at these. However, traveling to these weddings was the majority of our travels for the second half of this year.
Looking back, 2019 wasn’t a bad year at all, even though it wasn’t all wonderful. If anything 2019 taught us how short life is and that we should enjoy it while we can. We have made the most of our time in 2019, while looking forward to the future of 2020 and beyond by building our savings for whatever we decide to do!
