The primary motivation behind developing Half a World Away was to create a record of our Dutch adventure, and more importantly, to keep in touch with friends and family. We gave little thought to the power of the Internet to forge new connections, but recently discovered that our current friends and family weren’t the only ones reading this blog.

A week ago our new neighbors in Amsterdam discovered the blog during a Google search and promptly posted a comment introducing themselves. We were delighted and amazed that they had stumbled upon our little corner of the Web and that they had taken the initiative to reach out and make a connection.

I am looking forward to meeting them in person, for nothing beats the live, face-to-face, person-to-person interaction–that’s one of the reasons we travel after all. But I’m also more confident now that with this blog and email and our new web-cam, we’ll be able to reach out and stay in touch with all of you — friends both old and new.