MrRandMcnally's VirtualTourist Home Page

During my travels I have been lucky enough to meet many special people, but none more important than Andrea, With whom I will now share my adventures and my life. We have survived 2 years in Havana Cuba and are now preparing for the next 3 years in Bucharest Romania.

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Riding neer Song Kul, Kyrgyzstan

Close to home

As a child growing up in Richmond VA, I was a homebody. I was the kid who didn't really like sleepovers at other peoples houses and had no desire to go away for camp.

Even when I left my Richmond VA home for College at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania I planned to return home to teach high school History, possibly at the same high school I graduated from.

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At the School in Orel

Catching the Wanderlust.

This all changed when I saw a flyer for a school sponsored "Service Learning Project" going to Orel Russia to work with children with speach defects. I wanted to be a teacher and my favorite history Professor was the program leader so I signed up and off I went to Russia, In January.

I was introduced to a new kind of cold but after standing in Red Square, living with a Russian family and talking politics with a Colonel in the Russian Army late into the night, it was impossible for me to spend my entire life in Richmond Virginia.

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With Mom and Sis in Red Square

Family and Friends

I have been lucky enough to share my travel with my family and I will continue to draw my parents out into the wide world and to meet with my sister (Curlygirl) when our travels intersect.

Almost as important are the many friends I have met along the way. I look faoward to meeting new ones and staying in touch with those I have already met.

I will also do my best to share my trips with the people who find their way to this site and hopefully I can make others travels easier and more interesting.

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Friends in Suzdal

Finding a way to live and Travel

Since that trip I have studdied law at Moscow State University, worked in the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic and taken many side trips in the process. I've seen things I could never have imagined and met amazing people.

While I have a Law Degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg VA, I will not have a life of stability enclosed in the walls of a law firm or court room.

I will find a way to make travel part of my work and part of my life, and I will fill up this travel map.

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Starting out in Bogota

After Law School I joined the U.S. Foreign Service and was posted in Bogota for 2 years. Colombia was a wonderful place to live, work, and find love. I consider mysellf very luckey to have found my wife in Colombia but I would only have wonderful things to say about Colombia in any case. It is a Beautiful place with Mountians, Savanas, Amazonian jungles, Deserts, And an atlantic and pasific coast line. It was very hard to leave but the job and the draw of discovering new places called me on.

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With Dad and Sis in Guatemala

Escaped from Cuba, and moving on to Romania

I have found my way to live abroad in a way to really know a place.

Soon to be updated with:
Italy, Tuscany and Rome, Honeymoon
Antigua, Guatamala
Holguin Cuba
Mayan Rivera, Mexico
More on my Bogota and Havana, Cuba.

I will be moving to Bucharest, Romania, via Washington D.C. in 2009.

I'm afraid that I have been living in one of the countries with the lowest internet access in the world so I'm a bit behind but I'm working on it.

For you photography folks out there my photos are almost all taken on a Pentax Optio S40 or my dSLR a Pentax *ist DS. Some of the newer photos will come form a new Pentax Z10. The underwater shots are from a Cannon Elph Sport APS.