It’s been a strange time to release a book about travel and the Peace Corps. The coronavirus outbreak has been devastating and Peace Corps Volunteers were recently evacuated worldwide. Like many of you, I have been staying home and feeling grateful to the medical responders and others who are working so tirelessly on our behalf. If you’re ready for a distraction while we await better times, here are links to some of the stories that have appeared in places that focus on retirement and career changes, which are more numerous than I knew previously. You’ll find more links on the book’s Facebook page.
In a future post, I’ll share coverage from outlets less focused on retirement, like this interview on Peace Corps Worldwide.
Visit the book website to see reviews, trip photos and more, along with links to indie bookshops, Amazon and other places where you can order Not Exactly Retired in paperback or electronically. If you’ve read and enjoyed it, please post a review online!
We stayed at an Airbnb apartment instead of a hotel when we visited Sofia, Bulgaria last week. We also stayed at Airbnbs when we visited Tbilisi, Georgia and Sibiu, Romania in 2017.
The living room of our Airbnb in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Sorry for the mess.)
All three apartments were central located, with kitchens, living rooms, washing machines and comfortable beds. All cost much less than hotels, although more than local hostels. All three hosts were helpful and responsive. The woman who welcomed us to our apartment in Sofia told us about a wonderful local Nepalese restaurant, Gurkha, where we ended up having a delicious meal and conversation with the owner, as you can see in the photo.
Champa and I still use hotels, such as when we stayed in Bucharest for a couple of nights last week and weren’t sure when we would arrive. But we now prefer staying in Airbnbs because they provide us with extra room and a local contact to help us learn about a city.
Our Airbnb in Tbilisi, Georgia
Many of our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in Moldova use Airbnbs, too, when traveling or coming to stay in the capital, Chișinău.
I describe all of this because some Americans are still uneasy about staying in a private home instead of a hotel, whether through Airbnb or another service. Others include HomeAway, Couchsurfing, FlipKey, VRBO and Roomorama.
The concept may seem especially novel to some older travelers. As one wrote on the Senior Planet website, “At first glance, Airbnb looked to me like a site for freewheeling hipsters.” That writer tried Airbnb and became a fan, saying, “I’ve learned something new about myself: I really enjoy staying in a ‘real’ neighborhood and being a traveler, not a tourist.”
Champa and our guide, Florin, at the Airbnb we used in Sibiu, Romania, also shown in the photo at the bottom of this post.
We feel the same way and are not unique. Airbnb says more than one million of its users are now over 60, as are 10 percent of its hosts. Its 2016 report said some older Airbnb hosts now depend on this extra income to remain in their homes.
This past year, the Freebird Club launched an Airbnb-like service especially for older travelers and hosts. More broadly, older Americans have begun turning to a variety of flexible gigs and part-time jobs. In her latest list of 100 Great Second-Act Career Resources, career expert Nancy Collamer (my sister) identifies many of these.
One of my favorite blogs, The Senior Nomads, describes how a retired Seattle couple, Michael and Debbie Campbell, has spent several years staying at Airbnbs while traveling around the world. They explain: “As we were closing in on retirement, we felt we had ‘one more adventure in us’ so in July of 2013 we rented our house, sold our sailboat and one of our cars, and reduced our stuff until it fit in a small storage unit. We waved goodbye to our family and friends and set off to explore the world!”
This past summer, when we visited home, Champa and I experimented with the “sharing economy” in another way, by using a car-sharing service. We rented a blue Toyota Camry on Turo from a guy in Virginia for about half of what we would have spent with a car rental company. We had a great experience and would use the service again.
Serving as older Peace Corps Volunteers has opened our eyes in so many ways, and not only about Moldova. We’ve also become more comfortable with new online travel resources favored by people our children’s age. It turns out they work nicely for us, too. If you’ve had an interesting experience of your own with these resources, good or bad, I invite you to share them with a comment.
Champa and I are among the people featured in a new article from journalist Kim Painter about how Americans are navigating the second half of their lives. There are many possible transitions, she writes, but the “big one” is usually leaving one’s life’s work for whatever comes next. Painter also interviewed my sister Nancy Collamer. Her article for Vested appears below and is online here.
My sisters Ruth, left, and Nancy at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
Almost all of the Jarmul women took part in Saturday’s women’s marches: my sisters, my nieces, my daugher-in-law, even two of my granddaughters. You can see some of their photos here. Our friends were protesting, too, in North Carolina, New York, California and elsewhere.
Not Champa and me. We are in Moldova. We sent messages of encouragement but felt like we were missing in action.
I’ve written previously about how hard it is to be away at moments like this, noting after the Orlando shootings in June that “it’s strange to be so distant when something momentous happens back home.” Champa and I felt this frustration even more on Saturday. We were eating placinte and preparing lesson plans in Ialoveni while our family and friends back home were out in the streets.
Here in Moldova, there were no protests in solidarity with the Washington march, as there were in Sydney, Berlin, London, Paris, Nairobi, Cape Town and other cities around the world.
On the other hand, how many Americans noticed or cared who was standing next to Vladimir Putin at his press conference this past Tuesday during Putin’s widely reported remarks about Russian prostitutes? It was Moldova’s new president, Igor Dodon, visiting Putin at the Kremlin. For people here, Dodon’s trip was a big deal. (Even if you don’t speak Russian, watch his amusement when Putin is asked about prostitutes.)
One of the great gifts of Peace Corps is perspective. I am reminded every day that people around the world care about different things, even though they are connected in more ways than they may realize. Through Peace Corps, we and our fellow volunteers are trying to promote friendship and understanding among them. We also remain nonpartisan in our official roles.
So, although Champa and I wish we’d been there on Saturday, we hope our American friends will give us a pass. We were quietly cheering for you. Perhaps you heard us.
If you’re ready for a distraction while we await better times, here are links to some of the stories that have appeared in places that focus on retirement and career changes, which are more numerous than I knew previously. You’ll find more links on the book’s Facebook page.
All three hosts were helpful and responsive. The woman who welcomed us to 
"Not Exactly Retired" 