One year ago, today, we departed on this around the world adventure.

Just to provide some context on how long it’s been, here’s what my memory and a couple Google searches turned up:

The US presidential election was over a year away and the two frontrunners were Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. Speaking of New Yorkers, Eliot Spitzer was perceived to be the most ethical guy on the planet. Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds have had equally embarrassing years.

In other national politics, Sarkozy, Brown, and Abe were all newly in office and hugely popular. Not so much today. Benazir Bhutto had just announced she would return to Pakistan.

Litvinenko and missile-defense shields were chilling Russian-NATO relations.

The American military’s deathtoll in Iraq was around 3600. Today its 4113. The cofirmed Iraqi deathtoll was 40,000. Today its approximately 50,000. The number of undocumented deaths is probably much higher. People were waiting to see if the “surge” would work.

Terrorist drove their cars into the Glasgow airport. Fighting was sporadic, but constant in Lebanon and Palestine. Civil wars and separatist movements raged from Latin America to Africa to Asia- some things never change….

In financial news, the Dow was at 13565. Last time I checked, it closed at 11,215. Ouch.

Oil had just broken $70 a barrel. Today its more than double that (along with many other commodities, including ag). The average price of gasoline in the US was nearly $3. You know better than I how much it is now.

I won’t even talk about where the dollar was at. That’s even more depressing.

“Subprime” and “Credit Crunch” were relatively unknown words.

Since we’ll be returning home for a visit in just over a week and we’re near the end of our long journey through Asia, I’ll try to save my thoughts and reflections for other posts. Additionally, I’m going to try to hold off on making favorite/best-of lists. Rather, I’d like to model this post along the lines of a birthday, anniversary, or even New Years. All three occasions are celebrations more than anything else. And while they simply mark an arbitrary date, they provide a good opportunity to not only celebrate another year, but to reflect on what happened during the previous year and to anticipate the coming one.

Besides being a year older and married a year longer, we’ve changed a lot too:

Matt’s lost 20 pounds. Joylani’s lost 10.

Speaking of health, Joylani’s been to the doctor 6 times, while Matt’s racked up two hospital visits.

We’ve visited 25 countries. 18 new ones for Matt, while Joylani’s gone from having visited 6 nations prior to 30 now.

I cannot count the number of tallest, oldest, biggest, or other “est” things we’ve seen, nor the number of UNESCO and World Heritage Sights we’ve visited.

We’ve been at every single altitude between 80 feet below sea level (diving in Indonesia) to 18380 feet above it (in the Indian Himalaya). We’ve visited the most mountainous country in the world (Nepal) as well as the flattest country in the world (Maldives). We’ve crossed the equator twice, which (upon our return to San Francisco) makes our trip a bona fide circumnavigation of the globe.

Excepting the US, we’ve been to the three most populous countries on the planet. Total, the countries we’ve visited account for roughly half of the world’s population.

We’re feeling the effects of the sun, and not just in terms of more freckles.  Joylani has a blonde streak of hair.  Matt has a zig-zagged tan line on his foot from wearing his Chacos (he hasn’t worm shoes since November).

We’ve stayed in rooms that were less than 80 cents all the way up to, well, I’m not sure…thanks Mom and Dad

We’ve slept in over 130 beds.  And spent 29 nights on overnight transportation- almost a month!

We’ve met up with eight friends from home, plus Matt’s parents.

This list is random and incomprehensive, but even looking at these things that I jotted off the top of my head, one thing is apparent: it’s been a hell of year.