After listing their Evansville home and selling most of their belongings in order to begin living abroad in October 2024, Darrell and Penelope Pennington visited 44 cities in 14 countries across Europe before returning home for a visit in December 2025. They embarked on Year Two of their global adventure in January, a trek that started in Mexico and now has taken them into South America. Penelope — who quips she’s “a broad abroad” — shares missives from the road. Read the inaugural column here.
A common question we hear from family and friends is, “Aren’t you worried about war or violence breaking out somewhere you’re traveling in?” It’s a valid question and has been since we started our adventure just two-and-a-half weeks prior to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
In Year One, we traveled to Turkey, Hungary, Romania, and Montenegro — all countries with their own history of political unrest associated with Russia, and all are physically closer to the warring states of Russia and Ukraine than we had previously been. Tensions flared on our recent trip through Mexico, which was interrupted and re-routed while we already were ON a bus ride because of cartel activity! Now, we have entered South America, which is experiencing its own turmoil; I think most readers are aware of the interests the current U.S. administration has in these conflicts.
So, it certainly does influence the destinations we are looking at as we consider our next move. In many cases, we are trying to project what the situation may be in a given area in the time frame we are planning for. These are interesting times, for sure.
What has been illuminating is the conversations we have had with people across the world about current geo-political realities. Their take has often surprised us and provided an alternate perspective we likely wouldn’t have considered if we weren’t traveling and meeting people of different countries and cultures. When we started our travels in fall 2024, we met a lot of Canadians during a two-week cruise to Spain. Their analysis of the geo-political situation at that time seemed to align with what we would have expected to hear. It was the same, for the most part, while we were in England.
When entering non-English-speaking countries and meeting people there, however, one of the first questions we hear is asking for our take on political situations regarding international relations with other countries. I think, like the majority of U.S. citizens, our perspective on politics has always been a reflection of how it affects us personally or impacts America within its borders. Even topics like international relations were viewed through a lens of “what does it mean for America?”
We’ve listened to others discuss the topics that have generated heated debates between U.S. citizens and been splashed across mass media outlets. We’ve chosen to consume our news from the perspective of how it impacts the citizens of the country we’re in — an eye-opening experience for us and, in many cases, not what we would have expected. Similarly, the amount of engagement and thought from people under age 30 and how closely they consider U.S. actions on a global scale has been surprising.
Having engaged in hours of these conversations with people from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Spain, Africa, Mexico, Venezuela, Hungary, Romania, and other countries we have visited has certainly reframed our perspective and expectations of many of the topics being debated every day in the U.S. What the views are aren’t as important — to us, at least — as understanding that many assumptions on BOTH sides of the political spectrum in the U.S. are really off base as it relates to the global citizenry. What is not surprising, perhaps, is that most people voice significant displeasure with their own country’s politicians and how they are choosing whether or not to interact with the U.S. It’s just that their displeasure might not be what you would expect without the benefit of direct conversations. Just another of the many positives and life-altering experiences we are enjoying on this run across the world.
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