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Our first journal entry and I hardly know where to start. The
month or so since we Janna and I decided to go on this trip has been loaded
with things to talk about. I'll try to give some idea of how
our plans have gotten where they are so far and what we expect in the
coming weeks.
The story so far...
For those of you that are less up to date on what's we've been up to,
here's a little background info. Late last year Janna and I
started making plans to move back to the US. Our original plans
were that we'd quit our jobs, spend a month or so travelling around Europe,
and then head back to the US. Once in the US, we'd spend some
time visiting our families and friends in Boston, Orlando and Chicago. Then
we'd head out the the West Coast and pick a city to live in. If
we were really feeling ambitious at that point, we might fly to Australia
and New Zealand before returning to start new lives and (hopefully) new
jobs on the West Coast.
About a month ago, our plans started to grow up. I had heard
that it was surprisingly rather cheap to buy an around-the-world ticket
('RTW' for those of us in the know) that allowed you to stop in several
places for as long as you wanted. From there it was like two
kids in a candy store. First we started thinking Thailand and
Australia/New Zealand, then Nepal, then all of a sudden we're spending
our first two months in Africa. The truth is, I don't think
we've left the candy store yet. We're still thinking of new
ways of enhancing things. For instance, we've just signed up
for SCUBA lessons and I'm already imagining life as a master diver recovering
sunken treasure.
Planning...
The first step to planning all of this was to buy loads of books. The
most helpful was a book called "The
Practical Nomad" which basically teaches you about independent
travel: why you should do it and how to do it. That really
got the juices flowing. Then we started looking at other people's
travelogue web sites for ideas on where to go. From there,
with the help of loads of guidebooks, we decided on which cities/countries
we wanted to fly to and made our first trip to the travel agent. After
a whole lot of back and forth, we decided on our current route and booked
the tickets. My hands we're practically shaking when I made
the phone call. I still don't believe we're doing this.
Once we had the tickets booked, we were able to relax. For
about a day. The next step was to sort out the practicalities. Mostly
this meant sorting out bank accounts, travel insurance, hiring movers
to take our stuff back to the US, and especially, vaccinations. I
had never really paid too much attention to public health issues, but
I have a new found respect for people who've managed to eradicate diseases
like polio, typhoid, malaria from the majority of the western world. The
current tally for the number of shots we'll need is 9, not including the
polio stuff we had to swallow and the malaria medicine we'll have to take
once a week as long as we're in Africa and Asia. Going from
the high of planning all the cool things we were going to do to all of
a sudden thinking about all of the things that could go wrong was quite
a big shock.
One month to go...
But now all of the ugly bits have been sorted. Insurance is
bought and paid for and our vaccination regime is well under way and it's
easier now to think of those things as just precautions. From
here on out we have to buy all of our gear (Shopping! Yes!), sell the
stuff we're not taking with us, get the rest of the stuff moved, say goodbye
and then off we go.
How much longer?
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