In the 1960s, Robert Ornstein, through a series of experiments, verified that the speed of time seems to be largely determined by how much information our minds absorb and process — the more information there is, the slower time goes. So how does this apply to us as adults? Does time seem to pass more quickly? Is there less newness in our lives? Are we slowly using up our quota of potential new experiences or as we become older, are the experiences just becoming more familiar to us?

I’m not going to try to wrap my head around the psychology of it all, but as I sit here at Zenira Camp counting down the last days of 8 weeks at camp, I feel like I just arrived and at the same time it feels like a lifetime. As I have discussed with my co-workers, time moves differently at summer camp. I’ve also realized, it is not just at summer camp. This month it has been 9 years since I packed up my life and moved abroad. How is that possible? It seems like yesterday but when I look back on all that I have experienced, I wonder how I have done so much in 9 years, more than most people in a lifetime. Maybe I have lived a lifetime at Zenira Camp.

Let’s start with “camp time”. Even though I have had my share of time off, “days” at camp don’t really matter or even seem to exist. I often don’t know if it is a Tuesday or a Saturday. A single day can drag by and at the same time they all run together, and another week is starting. It may seem like there is a lot of routine during a summer camp. In theory, there is, but shit happens. The kids go to the beach after breakfast. That’s great…until it is pouring rain. This means that as a teacher, English lessons (Zenira is an English Language and Sports Camp) are moved to beach time…so much for planning time. Excursions are usually on Wednesday afternoon…until the bus company reschedules, and the excursion gets changed to Thursday. So now, an afternoon off is now English lessons, and the afternoon off is bumped back a day. Or the temperature on a sports afternoon decides to jump to 104°F/40°C so sports get changed to clubs so the kids can be in air conditioning. I have been at camp for just over 6 weeks now and we haven’t had one “normal” week as the schedule reads. Always some anomaly changing the schedule…so much for routine. It’s no wonder I occasionally had no idea what day it was let alone how much time has gone by. Summer camp has its own clock. Somedays it runs fast while others it runs slow.

Is time an illusion….I’m in the here and now in Kiten Bulgaria. Soon, I will be visiting Velika Tarnova, Bulgaria and my past will coincide with my present when I meet up with friends I met 20 years ago in the USA. Yet at the same time I am planning a visit to Turkey, country number 42 or 43 (honestly, I have lost track) in a few weeks, and thinking about the future visit of my friend Teri to Warsaw and further into the near future a trip to Paris, Morocco, and Poland with Cathy. No wonder time is fleeting, I am living the past the present, and the future simultaneously…time IS an illusion.

What’s all this have to do with anything? I guess as I sit here on my 61^st birthday, time is on my mind. My mother never reached this age, and my father had no idea when he was 61 that he had a mere 2 years left on this rotating sphere of opportunities. For me, they are forever young. I just don’t understand how 23 and 26 years have passed since they left this amazing life. I know I will never have time to do everything I want to do, see, and experience. So I want to make the most out of the time I do have. In the words of Steven Taylor, “Time doesn’t necessarily have to speed up as we get older though. To a certain extent, it depends on how we live our lives, and how we relate to our experience.” I plan to live my life to the fullest and be mindful of my experiences.

I mentioned above that I can’t believe I have lived abroad for 9 years. Even though I have mostly had a home base, I have lived in 4 different countries during this time. Each one has a very different lifestyle. I traveled quite a bit before moving to Paris, traveling to a place is very different than living in a new culture and country. It was here that I realized that your ordinary can be someone else’s extraordinary. Even though it is mostly “Western”, it is a far cry from life in the small town of Warren, Ohio. After living nearly 6 months in Paris, I returned to Warren, Ohio already knowing I wanted to follow my wanderlust and lead a nomadic life in new and radically different places. I had traveled to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, prior to living abroad and the Far East was pulling me. I signed up for a 6-month stint in China. That 6 months quickly came to an end, and I knew life in China was not over, it had just begun. But…in what seemed a blink of an eye, that 6 months turned into 4 years.

I feel like I lived a lifetime in those 4 years. I visited so much of China; living in 4 different cities/towns, saw 3 different parts of the Great Wall, Xi’an, and the Terracotta Army, Inner Mongolia where I was the only guest of a nomadic settlement. I rode a camel in the Gobi Desert and made a half dozen trips to Hong Kong…not to mention Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin, Guangzhou, and a few Ancient Towns. I spent 8 days in Tibet and even though it is considered part of China, it felt like another world…the land that time forgot. In Tibet, I camped at Mount Everest Base Camp. Living in China made it easy to visit South Korea, where I am sure I went 6+ times. From China, I also visited Moscow, Tokyo, Thailand, Nepal, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and made my first visit to Bali. I also made several trips to Paris via Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar. Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible that after China, I lived nearly 6 months in Bali and am coming up on 4 years in Poland. In the past two years, I have added Egypt, Morocco, Tanzania, and Hungary to my list with Turkey in the near future.

Spending the summer with these kids at camp, remembering when I was one of those kids makes me realize, time is my most precious commodity. Not that I need to race around and always be doing something, because downtime is important too…you know…balance. I could put all kinds of quotes about time here, but what I want to say after all of this is…find the time to do what makes you happy, what makes your soul feel alive, because no matter how many times we think we will have the time to do those things, the planets never quite align for that perfect moment…do it now! I think the popular soap opera of my childhood said it best….”Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

Peace Out!