About halfway through last year, we had covered all three of the large magnet boards that Chris set up for us to display places we’ve visited around the world. Two are prominently displayed in our kitchen. The third is above the dresser in Pookster’s bedroom. We bought a set of two smaller magnet boards and were planning to hang at least one of them up this year. I gathered all the remaining magnets from the middle of last year through our Guangzhou trip this past January, hoping that Chris would put them on the fourth board and hang them up. Well, he didn’t do this, so I ended up taking all the magnets and tucking them away somewhere. When I went to go retrieve them after we came back from Guatemala in May, I realized I didn’t know where they were anymore.

So I combed through multiple closets and drawers, trying to see if I could remember where I’d placed them. It made no sense that I could lose them. It was a decent quality (and thus weight) of magnets. This apartment is only so big, so there were only so many places where I could have put them. And while organizing Kaia’s things and setting aside clothes she’d outgrown to give away, I realized they were in my camera box in her walk-in closet the whole time! I was victorious! I took them all out and laid them out, alongside our Ecuador and Peru magnets, and put them on the board for Chris to put up on the wall.

He put them up this late afternoon, and I went to admire all our new magnets of the last year. We have new magnets from Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina from last summer. We have a new one from Albany, New York, from last October. From our Thanksgiving trip, we have an Alsace magnet to represent Strasbourg. And from our side trip back from Australia, we have a Guangzhou magnet (we already had a couple Hong Kong magnets from 2015-2016’s end of year trip). It’s quite the collection of magnets since 2012 (and a couple before that, which I ABSOLUTELY NEEDED to display, such as my very beloved rotating Disney World 2010 magnet). And when I went through magnets from previous travels, I realized that I had a handful that were gifted to me of places I actually hadn’t been to — or at least at that time. I found a glass magnet a former colleague based in Santiago, Chile, had brought when he came to our New York office for training. I remember I had told him that I liked to collect magnets from travels, so he remembered this and gave this to me when he met me. The magnet has a outline of the long, skinny country, and the words “Chile Al Fin del Mundo” or “end of the world.” Granted, I hadn’t been to Chile at that point in time. But we did go last year, so I decided to place it on our fourth magnet board as an ode to him and his thoughtfulness.