When I turned 10, I distinctly remember my mom writing in my birthday card “Congratulations, Sara. Wow! Double digits!”

I looked at the words and considered what they meant. I guessed I was a big girl.

The milestones only continued from there.

Thirteen years old marked the beginning of my teenage years. At 16, I received my drivers license, and at 18 I legally become an adult. I exited my teenage years at 20, could legally drink at 21 and turned a quarter century at 25.

I used to believe my youth would end at 30.

Every transition brings with it a from and a to  - more specifically, a stage or experience that our lives move away from and another that our lives move to.

Transitions have been constant in my life these past three months. I graduated from graduate school and applied for entrance back to the professional world. I have gone from having one adopted child (my cat) to becoming the proud mother of a cat and abandoned dog. My old-as-dirt, hand-me-down car from my younger sister has slowly and ungracefully fallen apart, so I have transitioned from driving a 1996 manual-transmission Honda Civic to finding money in my budget for a vehicle that actually works.

Between August and December of 2012, I traveled from the United States to six different countries. Before I left, several people asked, “what will the toilets be like where you’re going?”

I decided to let you all see for yourselves. These are the toilets I used around the world:

New Years Day, to many, is an opportunity to begin again – to forget about the struggles of the year just passed and dive naked into a pool of clean water and fresh experiences. I never looked at New Years this way. To me, reflecting on the good, bad, ugly and beautiful parts of a year are equally important to the goals I make for the year to come.

I believe it’s always important to remember where we came from.

This year, I welcomed a new decade while watching New Orleans residents illegally set off fireworks throughout cramped neighborhood blocks. I happily toasted a group of people I barely know at midnight, listened to Mozart on my way to the bars and had eaten my second burrito of the day by the time the clock struck three.

Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more. ― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

This is the third consecutive year that my family members have chosen not to exchange Christmas gifts. In 2010, we shifted away from this material side of the holiday in an effort to refocus on what we considered more important: spending time with and appreciating family and friends.

The year of 2012 marks another present-less Christmas, but also the first where none of my siblings made it home to our parents in New York. I stayed in New Orleans, Louisiana with my sister, Julie, while my brother continued his world adventures in Christchurch, New Zealand.