New Years

Can you believe it's a new year tomorrow? I am full of many emotions, including excitement, nervousness, trepidation, regretfulness, anxiousness, pride and determination. There have been a lot of changes in my life recently that I am still trying to catch up with them and accept them. My phone has been cancelled, so has my internet and my car Alice will be lent out to a friend so that she doesn't rot away while I am gone, and she can be useful to my good friend. Another change is that I have moved out of my house and now an aimless gypsy. Right now this gypsy is very cold and excited to bring in the new year with some close friends. I am already missing the people I am leaving behind and I hope that those who I have left behind will greet me warmly upon my return.

My trip is on it's way though, we have our transportation for our south pacific trip, our europe tours, our hostile and student cards, our health insurance and our flights all booked and paid for. 13 days. I can't believe I am starting off on this life changing adventure in 13 days. Thanks to my wonderful cousin I have a great backpack to hold all of my worldly possessions as I travel.

While I wait for my fly date I am heading to Vancouver for a week to visit old friends and enjoy what the city has to offer before gearing up for my trip with my travel companion. Though I am filled with many mixed feelings right now as I sever ties with my old life I am certain that I will adjust to this new adventure and embrace what lies ahead. Talk to you in the new year my friends and in the mean time keep warm!

Europe is a go!

I know that it has been a few months since my last blog but lets be honest, I am not on the trip yet and I don't lead an extra exciting life. Since my last post I have finished my degree in education and I am now organizing my life to fit into a 7x7x9 box, informing all of the people with their hands in my pockets that I am leaving, and getting the 'all clear' from my physician. In addition that significant list of things to do I purchased my tickets for the second leg of my trip. :)

After returning from Australia to Canada in the third week of April (during which I hope to visit, rest and do laundry) I leave once more during the last week of April to London. We are spending a week there before taking a 20 day tour of eastern Europe! This tour is done through Topdeck and will enable us to see ten countries during this whirlwind adventure.

Once we are done that and get our bearings we get to travel Italy for almost two weeks, in which we will most likely get lost, then find ourselves, then get lost again. Once we figure everything out we hop over to Greece to do an Island tour for ten, hopefully beautiful, days. After that we still have to decide where to go, options are plentiful and include places like Sweden but please feel free to suggest other options.

From that undecided location we are off to Ireland. Unfortunately too soon I will have to say goodbye to my travelling companion and continue my exploration on my own for three more weeks until my final return on July 26th.

My next post will most likely be the day before I leave on January 11th after that I will try to update this site weekly (assuming that I will have internet access). This means my posts will actually have information on the places and exciting adventures I will be on instead of the idle writings of an antsi-traveller. So farewell for now and to all of those in my life, "thanks for all the fish"!

98 days to go!

As of three weeks ago my friend and I purchased our tickets for Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. I now can hold the 'printed' version of my tickets and feel the overwhelming need to brag to my friends that my trip is now a reality. Buying the tickets was an adventure within itself. We went through a travel agency, which turned out to be a fine choice. The biggest issue we came across was trying to book a reasonable ticket to central Australia. Every way we tried to manipulate the situation we were spending almost as much on central Australia as we were on the trip to the continent itself. So we have decided to try being less organized and more flexible by booking that 'mini' trip as we go (I am sure that post will be an interesting one).

So we leave on January 12th 2011. We stop over in Las Vagas for five hours and then Fiji for another few hours before we land in New Zealand for 16 glorious days, then off to Australia. I will be taking so many planes that I am becoming a little nervous about how I will fair, though I am certain that it will be a better trip than Bernard and Bianca had with Whilbur on their trip down under.

December and January will be an interesting month as I will be shoving my material self into a storage unit and will becoming homeless for two weeks prior to my departure. I haven't decided what to do about that situation, but I am hoping that it will be a good time to say goodbye to friends by monopolizing their couches and eating their food.

I will continue to make my way through these last few months of school trying to live in the present despite the blinding brightness of my future travels.

Our plans....

This is the first post of many to come. I am setting out on an eight month adventure with my friend Devon to New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, and Europe. We leave in January and come back in August of 2011. I will be blogging weekly about our adventures. I am starting blogging a little early for several reasons. First I am way too excited not to get this blog going, second I thought it would be best to document the whole process (booking the tickets and all). We have looked though a whopping 50 pounds of tour books to see where we want to go and whether we want to go on some or not. We will fly into New Zealand first but we don't know to tour or not to tour the two islands (ie travel on our own). Then we will jump the water to Australia. We plan on going up the east coast by bus then flying from Darwin to Alice Springs then to Perth then to Adelaide. After that we jet off to Fiji for a few days to unwind. We have narrowed down some other choices, which you will have to read about in future posts.

We are booking our trip in the next week. Booking our trip has been filled with excitment, anxiety and a bit of frustration. We have looked online and gone to two travel agents. Now I sit on my couch wishing I could tap my red socks together and suddenly be one week from now, when I will have the tickets in my hands! In the mean time I will plug through school, counting the days until we leave...125!