Finally, I am still—or at least, temporarily still. I have been on the move nonstop since leaving Ghana (I miss you!). Between January and March, I flew to the UK, spent two nights in London, then hopped on a train to Reading for three nights. From there, another train took me to Winchester for another three nights. Once I had enough of hotel hopping, I took a four-hour train ride from Winchester to Manchester, where I spent five weeks with one of my friends (shout out to you, boo!). During that time, I took a four-night trip to Tunisia and two round-trip visits to Sheffield. After that, it was a three-hour train back to London, then straight onto a flight to Thailand—and well, we know how that’s been going.

So believe me when I say, I am grateful for this moment of calm. While this journey is just getting started, a girl needs to rest! The purpose of this whole “world tour” isn’t just about travel—it’s about keeping myself strong. In Ghana, I could feel my body changing. I was gaining weight, and if you know Ghana, you know it will humble you—because no one will hesitate to remind you that you’ve gained weight. Now, this isn’t about shame—it’s about concern. Since I’m away from my team in Chicago, I don’t have the luxury of letting my weight get out of hand. I’m a Black woman (in case you can’t tell), and I gain weight like my mother—in my thighs first, my face last. And when my thighs start growing, my prosthetic leg becomes too tight—too tight to sit, too tight to walk, too tight to stand. It gets to the point where it’s just too damn tight.

And while the easy solution is to say, “Just lose the weight,” I already know that. The problem is once the prosthetic becomes too tight to even move, it becomes nearly impossible to lose the weight in the first place. Once that happens, things go downhill fast. So, here I am, traveling the world as the most expensive weight-loss plan ever created. Because the reality is, the gym just doesn’t work for me. Between my prosthetic and simply being a woman, I attract way too much attention—no matter where I am. At first, I tried working out at home. I’d run around my house using my VR headset twice a day. It was perfect—I burned 1,400 calories in the first few days and was actually building a habit. Then, just as I started to see results, my WiFi decided to betray me. Eii, Ghana will humble you. Even after upgrading to the best WiFi plan available, it still wasn’t strong enough to load the graphics fast enough to keep my routine going.

And so, I sat. I sat while I worked. I sat while I crocheted. I sat while I watched TV and ate my favorite foods. And the more I sat, the more I felt my body weaken. My leg got too tight to take a two-minute walk to grab coco and bread, too tight to even wear around the house. When I was forced to switch back to an older, less comfortable socket—which also started feeling tight—I knew I had hit my danger zone. All this movement has been good for me—diving is also a great workout—but it’s been a reminder that I face different kinds of limitations. If you read an earlier blog post, I talked about the Spoon Theory, and let me tell you, I am low on spoons.

So, for now, I’m pressing pause on the constant airport hopping. This doesn’t mean I won’t be moving around—just that I won’t be on another plane in the next week or two. Instead, I’m going to actually be a Bangkok tourist for a little while. I’ve been in Bangkok for about two weeks now, and I have yet to truly be a tourist. So far, I’ve visited cat cafés, been continuously overwhelmed by the size of the malls, and I’m now fairly comfortable hopping on a motorbike taxi for short rides. I’ve started exploring the food scene, but I still haven’t stumbled upon a night market during its actual hours of operation. And while I plan to visit temples, I will not be seeing any monkeys—or elephants—unless the sanctuary is actually ethical. There’s still so much left for me to do while I take this much-needed break. But once my spoons—and my coins—are replenished, you already know I’ll be on the first thing smoking to another country.