Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click one of them, I may receive a small commission (for which I am very grateful for) at no extra cost to you.

As they say, all good things must come to an end. That “thing” in this era of our lives would be research year. For those unaware, Austin has been on research year since July 1, 2018 and he finished his research year on June 30, 2019. He started back to official residency on July 1. While he may excited to be headed back into the operating room, I am certainly not excited to have him more busy. Over the past year we have certainly taken advantage of his abundance of free time. I saved up my days off from the beginning of the year in 2018 and have already burned most of my 2019 vacation days. In addition to traveling, it has also been nice to have someone to share in household responsibilities and to go on date nights., As this year has now come to a close, I wanted to do a post with a research year recap.

• 

So to answer all of the questions that we have been getting…

1. No, we don’t have any big trips planned for the rest of the year. We plan to head down to southern Utah during Austin’s first 7 day block off in October.
2. Yes, he’s STILL in training. He has two more years of residency.
3. No, we won’t be moving to North Carolina in two years as he will have to complete fellowship after he is done with residency and there is not a colorectal surgery fellowship in North Carolina (or South Carolina or Virginia for that matter).
4. Yes, we had legitimately the best year ever, with many “once in a lifetime” trips and quality time spent together. We are incredibly GRATEFUL for this year.

Austin did win two funny “awards” at the end of the year that are very fitting for our research year experience… “most likely to be a Delta Platinum” frequent flyer (he’s Gold on both American and Delta, lol) and “really really tan, even for a research resident”. Pretty fitting.

As I now have more free time spent alone, I plan to be even more regular with the blog as well as begin a new travel tips series and kickoff my YouTube channel, which I started a few months ago but haven’t uploaded any videos to yet. Go ahead and subscribe so you are the first to see my videos! More to come on that, but of course if you are curious about anything travel-related, let me know. Happy to answer your questions.

Here is a research year recap with some pictures from this past year of amazingness…

These are pictures of our main “big” trips. Not included: Jackson Hole, a zillion trips to North Carolina, “Lake Marblehead” aka Lakeside Marblehead, camping in the Uinta Mountains, and southern Utah.

For more details on some of these trips, please see past blog posts:

Havasupai:
http://beautahfulworld.com/havasu-falls-hike/
http://beautahfulworld.com/hiking-to-the-confluence-at-havasupai/
http://beautahfulworld.com/packing-list-for-havasupai/

New Zealand:
http://beautahfulworld.com/what-is-it-like-to-take-a-campervan-through-new-zealand/
http://beautahfulworld.com/new-zealand-south-island-itinerary/
http://beautahfulworld.com/hobbits-hikes-and-cool-sites-new-zealand-north-island-itinerary/

Hawaii:
http://beautahfulworld.com/top-3-hikes-in-kauai/
http://beautahfulworld.com/living-life-large-in-kauai/

Going to continue each Wednesday with a new post so let me know in the comments if you have any travel tips that you would like more information about and I would be happy to share!

Let’s stay in touch…

name:
email:

Sharing is caring!