2 Generations 1 Mic
Explore the journey of an intergenerational and intercultural couple navigating life, love, and the unique challenges of a 25-year age gap. At 36 and 61, they bring together two different generations, cultures, perspectives, and life experiences, while making it work.
2 Generations 1 Mic
Romanticizing parenthood: Growing in a Fragile Society
What if the decision not to have children could pave the way for building a multinational empire? As a couple with a 25-year age difference and a decade of marriage, we, Mark and Andy, share our journey of navigating societal expectations and personal choices. From the common question about our parenthood plans to the intricate balance of managing an international business, we explore the delicate dance between personal and professional commitments. Our lifestyle, filled with frequent travel and family responsibilities, shapes our decision to remain child-free, challenging traditional norms and celebrating individual paths.
Parenting isn't just a personal choice; it's a cultural statement. We admire those who skillfully balance family and career, yet openly discuss our sense of unreadiness for such a life. By examining cultural differences in parenting and alcohol consumption between the U.S. and Europe, we unveil how societal judgments shape decisions. Our critique of the "participation trophy" culture leads us to celebrate the values of competition and striving for excellence, fostering debate on what truly prepares the next generation for success.
From strict upbringing lessons to the middle-ground parenting approach prevalent today, we reflect on the varied expectations placed on children across cultures. With a nod to familial duty and societal norms, an anecdote about a bartender with a biomechanical engineering degree highlights the enduring influence of family responsibilities. We invite you to join the conversation on participation trophies and parenting strategies, encouraging a dialogue on what equips children for a fulfilling future. Join us as we explore these multi-faceted dynamics, offering insights and sparking thought-provoking discussions.
it's two generations, one mic. My name is mark, this is andrein or andy, since nobody can pronounce that name. So if you haven't already, please help us with the algorithms like subscribe. Follow us on youtube and most podcast channels. We're there, so find us social media as well. Engage with us, ask us questions. We're more than happy to answer them and follow the discussion as we move things along. If you'd like to hear us talk about something in particular, we'd be happy to do that too. The basis of this show is supposed to be like relationship oriented, but we talk to other people about interesting things, but we'll always keep coming back to relationships and things like that and how that interacts with whatever else you do in your life as a couple or by yourself.
Speaker 2:But why? Because you and I are married. We've been married for 20, no, 20 something years.
Speaker 1:You're way ahead of yourself, woman.
Speaker 2:We are separated by a 25 year gap. We've been married for 10 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 27 years, I would be in prison. I would be in prison if that were the case.
Speaker 2:You'd be in jail for sure. And we have a 25-year gap right, and today's episode we are going to talk about romanticizing parenthood and growing in a fragile society. And growing in a fragile society and I really want to talk about this because I think that's for us that we've been married for so long. Everybody keeps asking me when are we going to have kids? We don't have kids like together. You have kids from previous marriages that are adult kids.
Speaker 2:You also have grandkids, right and to me, I'm 36 years old but I still feel like sometimes I need an adult with me. I don't feel 100% like an adult. I have my own business, I run an international company, I can take care of my mom, I can take care of you, but to me sometimes, like thinking about caring for another, like a growing human, I just don't feel confident or interested in it. And a lot of people keep asking us when are you guys going to have kids? We may not want to have kids. I may not want to have kids, and it's okay to respect that. And I get mad when people ask me well, but who's going to take care of you when you're older? That's why you're having kids. Is that why you're having kids? So you have somebody to take care of you when you're older? I've thought about that. Tiffany's going to take care of me when I'm older. I'm going to take care of her.
Speaker 1:Because my daughter Tiffany, also one year older than you, but my daughter Tiffany is also very similar. She wants no children, she has no desire to have children and she can barely tolerate being around other people's children for only a certain period of time, exactly because she gets very nervous about that, and so she's like we made a deal.
Speaker 2:I'll take care of her, she'll take care of me. We'll have cats and dogs and all the animals in the land, and that's my. I haven't thought that far ahead in my life, so at this point I feel like not because we have a stable relationship. Can we afford a kid? Yes, do I want it? No.
Speaker 1:Well, you also don't have. You don't, honestly, it's true, but you also don't have the time. And it's again. Everybody has personal choices, which is there's nothing wrong with either choice. If you want to build your career separately and that's all you want to do, that's fine. If you want your career to be a homemaker, a mom, a homemaker and do nothing else, that's fine. If you want to do both, try to have a balanced career of being a homemaker, a mom and also having a career, you can do that too. It's your choice and you shouldn't be afraid or shamed of any of those three choices. It's all what you want to do and how that mixes with your family.
Speaker 1:But I agree, but you don't, you have no desire to do that. And your goal is the first one. Your goal has been and since we've been together, is build and we own an international business, international beauty brand. But your whole thing is I'm building an empire here. That is my goal. I am building an empire that a big company like a L'Oreal or a P&G or somebody is going to swoop in, write a big check for one day.
Speaker 1:And I can't do that if I'm worried about taking care of another human other than my husband is trying to keep healthy and my mother who lives with us. So I can't even imagine you. And again, I think everybody has their own situation. So if that's the choice of women, that they have small children, they have children, they have their lives and they have that traditional life Most of them someone doesn't call them and say hey, by the way, I need you to get on a plane to Singapore tomorrow, you know what I'm saying. And then from Singapore you need to go to Taipei and then also Bangkok and then run back through Amsterdam for a day and then down to Paris and then back home to Madrid or something. They're not living a life like that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:They are living. The traditional go to work at this time. We have the kids, we pick them up, they do the sports or they do the ballet or they do whatever activity. We have dinner at this time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but maybe that's not what they it to do. Maybe I personally have met so many people with kids, that I mean. We travel a lot, we always talk to different people and, again, my husband is chatty, cathy, he loves to engage in conversations.
Speaker 1:I'm from Texas originally and that's the law. That's what we do. We go talk to people we don't know when we make friends.
Speaker 2:You're nosy, that's what it is. Maybe, and sometimes we talk to people when they have kids and, yes, they love their kids now that they have them, but they really didn't want to have them to begin with. It was not in their plans.
Speaker 1:It wasn't in their original plans. Maybe at that time.
Speaker 2:Right. So I think in Spain it's a whole different story. Women, spanish women have kids in their 50s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 40s and 50s 40s and 50s, because this is the time where they feel that they partied all they wanted, they have a career they want, they traveled all they wanted and now it's the time to have kids. So that's that to me. Whether I understand it may be not as good. I mean, I can't imagine myself at 50 having a kid because my knees hurt now. God knows what's going to happen then, but to me that's when you should have a kid, right when you already accomplished what you wanted to accomplish. I've known so many girls that have kids and they can't wait for the grandparents to take care of the kids so they can go out because they have the kids or they don't. I don't know, babe. I just Sometimes people tell you oh, you have, you have a great relationship, you were married, you should have kids. No, we shouldn't If that's not what we want at this point in life.
Speaker 1:They think that that's the way everyone, it should be for everyone, and when it's not, it's a personal choice of what you want to do and it doesn't define you either way on what choice you make.
Speaker 2:And nowadays, back in the day, women were homemakers and, yes, women will stay at home. The husband will go out to work and come back and the woman will take care of the kids. But today, not only as a woman, you have to be a mom, you have to also work. You also have, unless you marry somebody rich, making it work as a family, and give them good life Both parents work and the life of the woman I just feel like it's put behind.
Speaker 2:I see a lot of my friends that have kids. They're like oh, I'm sorry, I don't have any makeup, I don't have any time to do this, I don't have any time to do that, I don't have any time to do this. And they're happy. Some of them are happy with it, but some of them are not. Some of them. I think out of all the people that I grew up with in school, I think just two of them are the ones that have planned to actually have a kid and wanted to have a kid. At the time they got it Because all the other ones were just. It just happened and now their career doesn't take off and they regret that and they take that kind of like on the husband, I guess, and on the kid. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:So they blame them.
Speaker 2:They blame them.
Speaker 1:Subconsciously they blame the husband and the child a little bit, because their career dreams weren't fulfilled, because they had to step back and be a mother.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and now they have to have another job.
Speaker 1:that kind of like can Help support the family, but not really what they wanted to do for a career. So they're disappointed in their own personal development because they had to take the choice of doing something else Exactly.
Speaker 2:And yes, again, they are married, they have a stable relationship, but that doesn't mean you have to have a kid. My mom still asks me are you planning on having kids? I don't know, mom, and I mean, after your cancer treatments and everything, you can't have kids. We can't have kids together. That's a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, first of all, I had a vasectomy years ago, but then after that and I mentioned this in another episode that you know five years ago, a little over five years ago, maybe five and a half, six years ago I got diagnosed with prostate cancer and we're going to do a whole episode about that. For men is what that entailed, what I went through, what you can expect and what you should do in that case. But because of that I had to make a couple of decisions on that and if you know, if I had just let it go, I would have. I would be dead by now because it would have spread. They call prostate cancer the silent killer of men for a reason because they generally don't know. They even have it until it's too late. And if it spreads it's too late, you're done.
Speaker 1:And sadly, at that time I had many, many friends reach out and had either been diagnosed with prostate cancer as well and had a chance to treat it, or it was too late. They found out too late and they have since passed on. And that's the thing that I put my whole journey on my social media on purpose for a reason for that, and I would have friends say why are you sharing so many personal details about what you're going through and I'd say you know what? It doesn't matter to me. If it saves one man's life, one person's life, and helps their family, then it's worth it. It's worth it me telling my story Because if you catch it in time, you can save your life.
Speaker 2:And that's important.
Speaker 1:We'll do a whole episode on that. But because of that treatment I had to do either surgery that had a lot of complications there that weren't going to be fun for the rest of my life, or I could have intensive radiation therapy and I had to take female hormones too. That's a whole other story. So they do that for six months and then I had intensive radiation uh radiation treatments, targeted radiation therapy and five really, really intensive treatments over two weeks period two in one week, three in the next. And when I say intensive I mean so much that I could not walk, uh or even sit up uh minutes or 20 minutes after I'd had it done.
Speaker 1:It was, it was brutal, but part of the side effects from that unfortunately, even if I had not had the previously, had had the vasectomy was that I can't have children ever again. Like biologically I couldn't. I couldn't make a child, yeah. So it's just not a thing. So you would have to. We've talked about this before, about you know. Okay, maybe you know if we were going to do that, could they do?
Speaker 2:you know, we'll adopt, or you know but I'm not ready for that and people keep pushing me and I am not ready for that. So I, and I believe me, I, I am amazed by all these women and all these men that can actually balance, work with their kids and are actually happy with them and the kids are happy and I admire that, because in my head I can't figure out the combination and how to make it work. But I just feel like a lot of people also yeah, a lot of people they're not ready to have kids and they didn't want to have kids. And on a fun fact, do you know that women, like the US is the number one country with female alcoholics? That's a fun fact. And that's a lot of them. That's the only way that can bear their kids when they have alcoholics. That's a fun fact.
Speaker 1:And that's a lot of them. That's the only way that can bear their kids when they have alcohol on.
Speaker 2:Well, there's the wine culture.
Speaker 1:A lot of women are drinking wine in the afternoon.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it's because this is it. This is the way to decompress. And they can only stand their kids when they have alcohol in them. And to me that's. I like alcohol, I like to have a drink, but I wouldn't that. To me it's not a thought, right.
Speaker 1:Right, and you're not talking about all women here.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I'm just talking about 12% of women in the US. 12% of women are alcoholics in the US.
Speaker 1:And the main reason of that is they're trying to deal with their family stress and structures and their lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's. That's an interesting fact. But what I was why I brought that up is because as long as people keep trying to tell us, oh, you want to have kids or not, people here, they judge you so much, they just want to give you. Like, when we go out to have lunch and we're having wine at noon, people are judging us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very. That's the thing and that's one of the reasons we really like living in Europe, our European living, much better, because it's a different lifestyle. They're not drinking glasses of tea, they have tea in a bottle. But everybody at every table in the restaurant they have a glass of wine or they have beer. People drink alcohol. And they go back to work and they go back to work.
Speaker 2:It's not a big deal yeah.
Speaker 1:In America it's like oh, how dare you be drinking this early? I know they're very judgy and like what you should be doing.
Speaker 2:I think it's part of that fragile society, warren, that everybody has to judge what you do. Everything you do is wrong and I don't want. Maybe that's the part of why I don't want to have kids yet, because I don't. I don't want my kids to grow up in today's world where everybody judges you. God forbid all these kids. Now, with social media, they have high standards to follow and to me I don't know what being a teenager is nowadays, which should be super stressful. There is nowadays which should be super stressful and also I will put a lot of pressure in my kid. Right, I will never be. I don't think I will be part of that participation trophy culture. That I no offense, but if you don't win, you don't deserve a trophy or a medal. Right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm the same. I'm the same way. I'm very old school. I, you know, I I played sports from the time I was five. All the way up through school I coached sports. Um, yeah, I coached baseball for my kids, baseball teams and stuff like that. I was never the let's get participation trophies for people. I'm from the school that was like you play, if you want a trophy, you win. The division you win, you get a trophy.
Speaker 1:Because we're not supposed to be raising a culture of participators, we're raising a culture of winners, and sports is about teamwork and learning and how to do that. But you also, the American thing is to win. You want to be a winner and I don't think you're sending a bad signal that if you didn't win, you're a loser and you don't get anything. But that's life. Yeah, but you've got to learn. Yeah, everything's not handed to you on a silver platter. You have to go work for that, you have to put in the effort to get that.
Speaker 1:And I remember, even back when I was coaching baseball this is years ago I used to get really irritated at some of the team moms because they were like oh, showing up and oh, here's your juice boxes and here's your snacks and I was like OK, look, thank you, we'll do that afterwards. Right now we're still practicing and these kids need to worry less about the snacks and the juice boxes and they need to be worried about more about how to catch a ball, how to throw that ball and how baseball works. So that, to me, was the bigger priority. Then we have the snacks and we have the parties and things like that, and I'm all for that kind of thing, but again, I don't like participation trophies. I don't like that generation.
Speaker 1:I don't like that generation of people that, oh, we've got to make everything fair and it's participation and it's just to me, it's just whiny. I don't like that whininess. I'm about, you know, let's have a competition, let's have a clear winner. That's why I can't get into your country sports, soccer, many other things. They call it football, but I still call it soccer. I can't play an entire game that ends in a tie. What's the point? You need to have some sort of winner on a game. If I just invested three hours of my time, I want to see somebody win a sporting event.
Speaker 2:Well, it does. Usually it's because it's tournaments, and in tournaments you rack points.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like the World Cup.
Speaker 1:How many times do people tie? I don't like ties. That's not a thing. That is true. You need a winner.
Speaker 2:He asks at the end okay, they tied. So now what I'm like, the game is done.
Speaker 1:Oh, don't get me started, and then don't even get me started on that. How your clock in the game?
Speaker 2:No, just do the math 45 minutes two times 45 minutes, and then let's add some extra time.
Speaker 1:We don't know what that's going to be, but all these rules are just willy-nilly. I don't like that.
Speaker 2:No, they are rules in soccer. I don't want my kids to grow in this culture. Believe me, I was raised by a very strict mom. My mom was very strict. I'm the only child with my parents' marriage. I have half siblings, but with my mom I was her only child and she always told me that either you come home with the best grades or the worst grades. Don't come here within the middle, and that has been embedded in me, that either you're the best or the worst. Just don't be mediocre. And maybe today, whatever we're growing and everything in today's world, it just feels like everything is in the middle. Maybe it's just my thought process.
Speaker 2:And when I was talking to our friend Cherry that lives in Taiwan, we were talking about the difference in cultures and how the kids in there in Taiwan that's an other extreme right that everything they do, nothing is good enough. So they grew up thinking that they're not good enough, that whatever, even when they're the best and that's why they excel. China is the same when they excel in things. Japan is the same. They excel in things. You're not good enough. And I don't want I mean I don't want both parts of the spectrum. I don't want to be. I wouldn't want my kid to be raised in that culture, but I wouldn't want my kid to be raised also in like oh you failed, good job, you can try again tomorrow. Yes, you can. In life you can, but that teaches you not to be maybe.
Speaker 1:Not strive enough to win Not strive right.
Speaker 2:It doesn't give you a goal.
Speaker 1:Because you're going to get a.
Speaker 2:A trophy, either way A trophy either way exactly. So what's the point? Why are you making an effort to win? And, uh, it's it just in in. In europe, for example, we have. We see that with the kids, right. How asian. Uh, all these in spain, for example, all these grocery not grocery stores, kind of like bodegas, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'd be like a little fruiteria Convenience stores Well, it's not even. It's like a fruiteria where they sell fruits and vegetables and things like that and also the convenience stores kind of like the bazaars where they sell a lot of things. All these are run by Asians by Chinese people who work harder than anybody that I've ever seen there.
Speaker 2:These people work so hard they work nonstop, seven days a week. Exactly, and they have their kids after school working there. I've seen the kids charge for my card, like this five-year-old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, five-year-old kid is working in the store. Is working in the store Running your credit card.
Speaker 2:Running your credit card and to me I'm like dang, what was I doing at five? Not charging credit cards for my mom's business? That's for sure. But to me I just think it makes you maybe try I don't know how to describe it it makes this culture more to teach the kids to be more responsible and maybe take care of knowing the business, and maybe they have to do homework, because I see the kids doing homework too, like they are doing homework and they're also charging the cards at the same time. So sometimes I ask the kids oh, what are you doing there? Because they also speak fluent Chinese and fluent Spanish better Spanish than you speak.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And they're doing homework and also working with their parents, and I just don't think in America that will be a thought in the US, like if you have a business, you will not have your kid working there with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a. It is definitely a an Asian cultural thing in a lot of that that, because even one of our favorite restaurants, uh, there's a bartender that we know and as I'm talking to him, uh, for the first time a few weeks ago, I said to him I, I said, you know, we were talking about sports and everything, and it came out that he graduated from texas a&m and I said, oh wow, you went to a&m. He says, yeah, I have a degree in biomechanical engineering. And I said, said, and why are you bartending? He said because my dad owns the restaurant.
Speaker 1:And he wants me here to learn.
Speaker 2:He's in his 70s.
Speaker 1:He wants me here to learn the business. I guess maybe he's going to take over someday. I don't know what the plan is, but I mean that's the Asian cultural thing is that you come back to the family business, no matter what you're doing, and learn what we're doing here, in case you have to help someday. And so he's in the restaurant now no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I would also like to know that if you've had an experience where, on the other side, like, what do you think is the appropriate thing? What works for you? Are you a participation trophy parent, Feel free to argue with us and tell us why you think that's important. I'd like to know that. So please comment subscribe like, follow us and engage with us and tell us you know, defend your position. Why do you think or what?
Speaker 2:are you teaching your children by?
Speaker 1:giving them participation.
Speaker 2:Is it okay to drink at noon? I think so. I mean if you don't have a problem. I mean if you're not waking up at six in the morning to take shots of vodka. I mean, having a glass of wine at lunch is fine, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Again, I think that's because a lot of them they're going back to work or they have to go do a kid's function or they're doing something else. Maybe they don't feel comfortable doing that, but that's again, that's definitely a cultural thing. Difference of Europe versus America where everybody drinks in the daytime. It's just a thing.
Speaker 2:Everybody drinks all day. It's funny to me because in America, especially here in the US, I mean number one if you're 18, you can't drink. You can vote, but you can't drink. To me that's you can buy a gun, but you can't drink.
Speaker 1:You buy a gun, you can vote, but you can't drink a beer.
Speaker 2:And then when you guys can drink, you guys go way overboard, like you go bananas with the drinking Like. Look at all these kids in spring break and in frat houses and all these parties. And what's that about Like? Is it because like it's so forbidden?
Speaker 1:I think it's because everybody, they live such a sheltered life all the time and we heard this from. We went on a European cruise a year ago or so throughout the Mediterranean and we were talking to the bartenders and stuff and he said, yeah, you can always tell the Americans on the cruise ships. He said because they come in and they lose their mind with the alcohol, they're just drinking nonstop and they're way overboard, they're drunk and they're just way overdoing it. And he said you can tell the difference between the Americans that come on and the Europeans that drink every day and know how to handle their alcohol and know they don't have to get smashed just because all the alcohol is available to them.
Speaker 2:It's free alcohol, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like they approach it from two different ways and the Americans get there like, oh, I'm finally free to do what I want, and they just go a little overboard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because here in the US you guys don't do open bars, Open bars yeah.
Speaker 1:No, there's no such thing as open bars in the US generally, it's mostly because of liability issues and lawsuits and stuff that have to do with, you know, driving. Remember, again, in Europe you're walking a lot more everywhere. Here you're drinking and driving. It's a big difference. You don't like, you don't drive, you don't walk places in Texas at all, so you're driving everywhere. So you're having to also think okay, I'm drinking, how much am I drinking? Then I have to get back in the car and drive. So it's different. In Europe you're just, you can have a bottle of wine, the whole bottle there, you and your person you're having lunch with or whatever, and then you're just walking back home and they want to take a nap. You take a nap. Again, it's a different lifestyle, it's a different dynamic and that's probably has a lot to do with what they're doing and why they are doing it yeah.
Speaker 2:So I remember when we were watching the first time Emily in Paris.
Speaker 1:Yeah, emily, in Paris.
Speaker 2:Yes, she like that's one of the things in that movie, in that show, where she is out for lunch with her boss and everybody else and they have a bottle of wine, they're drinking, and she's shocked by that. And yes, like it's such a European thing when you go out, actually, in Europe sometimes they have a thing called the menu of the day, for example in Spain, which is your prefix meal for a lower price, usually in the weeks for people that work, and that includes a beer or a glass of wine or a beverage, but most people have beer or wine with their lunch.
Speaker 1:Or a big table to get a bottle. Everybody gets a bottle of wine, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Everybody drinks bottles of wine, and it's just they don't. I don't see kids trying to hide from their parents. I mean, I've seen-.
Speaker 1:Well, also, I remember, over there at 18, they can drink legally.
Speaker 2:Yes, but also so the 18 and 0 kids are sitting there drinking beers in the afternoon, but I also have seen kids like 15, 16, maybe having a glass of wine with their parents at dinner, like, and they're not, they're not going. I have never seen people out there like kids so stumbling down the streets or trying to buy liquor. I think they're more trying to buy cigarettes.
Speaker 1:Over there yeah like under 18.
Speaker 2:But alcohol is just not kind of like. Oh, it's so forbidden that you have to hide and drink and it's open that you can drink, and I've seen construction workers, government workers, drinking their beer on the street.
Speaker 1:Yeah, while they're in the middle of doing work.
Speaker 2:Well, they were like in the little break.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they have like their beer and they go back to work and I'm like that's a little different.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's not that good, but OK, they can handle it. If you can handle it, why not? Yeah. So again, I just think here it's we're growing in a fragile society where everybody judges you, everybody wants to control what you're doing, everybody wants to tell you what to do, but then if you don't do it, they do it. I mean, if you do it, you're wrong, if you don't do it, you're wrong. So that's why I don't want to have kids in this society.
Speaker 1:I think that's it All of that to say.
Speaker 2:I don't want to have kids?
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:But again, if that's your choice, there's nothing wrong with that. Have kids, be a homemaker, have a career, don't have kids. And if you do and you do all that, congratulations.
Speaker 1:God love you. You pull it off, but again, it's all about choice and it's your choice to do whatever you'd like to do, and there's no shame in either one of those scenarios. And you know, I think we're just saying that. I think that other people shouldn't worry about so much about what others are doing. Let everybody else live their own life.
Speaker 2:Live your own life and don't be so judgy. And don't try to control other people. Just live your life period. Live your life as long as you don't harm anybody. Yeah, Just live your life. That's what freedom is supposed to be about.
Speaker 1:That's why living your own life without bothering others.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Let them do what they're doing so.
Speaker 1:please tell us if you have different thoughts. We'd like to know what those thoughts are. If you have comments, you have questions, we'd be happy to go into that more for you. You have to start by liking, subscribing or following us YouTube and on every other platform. We have new episodes dropping every Tuesday mornings, 6 am, Central Standard Time. So please join us and follow this adventure.
