And she’s off…

So it’s official. I gave notice at work. I’m going. I’m leaving NYC, one of my favorite places, to go off on an adventure to discover more favorite places. I even just bought myself a really nice new camera- the Canon Powershot G7. It’s going to take some work to re-teach myself the manual controls to take that “perfect shot,” since I haven’t taken photography classes since high school. I’m determined to do some real photography on this trip. To go along with the camera, I also bought a Smark Disc Photo Bank to store all of my pictures. Deirdre and I can both dump our memory cards on it to store our pictures. How perfect is that little invention?! In addition to my technological items, I have also purchased some pretty darn cute travel clothes (as far as travel clothes go) from Lucy.com, including the following:
and as my tanktops. These for my capris: these for my pants: and this for my skirt: These clothes are all made from materials other than cotton so they will be quick drying, as I’ll have to be washing my clothes often since I’m not bringing that many along. I still need a pair of pants and a few t-shirts (those will probably be cotton) and then my clothing list is finito! In addition to these purchases, I’ve also bought a silk sleeping liner (not bringing a sleeping bag, since we’ll be in mostly HOT climates), a headlamp (that I’m obsessed with), these for hiking shoes and these for my sandals/normal walking shoes
Other than spending all the money I have on supplies/clothing, Deirdre and I are working very hard on trying to pin down our itinerary and get these plane tickets purchased! Over this past weekend, we might have decided to do South America instead of Africa, since Deirdre has tons of contacts there and speaks fluent Spanish; while I’ve been dying to go to the Galapagos and trek the Inca Trail in Peru to Machu Picchu. Other than that change, I think this is what our itinerary is looking like right now (South American countries are tentative):
29 OCT Los Angeles to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
31 DEC Lima to Trivandrum, India (Southern India up to Nepal on smaller flights and busses/trains)
20 MAR Kathmandu, Nepal to Bangkok (We will do Thailand, Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam overland/smaller flights, and then down to Singapore through Malaysia)
14 JUN Singapore to Jakarta
8 JULY Bali to Cairns, Australia (Cairns down to Sydney by Greyhound)
10 AUG Sydney to LA

I’m sure it will change again TOMORROW, but I just wanted to get something up here! I really want to get flights finalized so I can go out and buy Lonely Planets and start doing some MEGA research. I seriously cannot wait to get down to the nitty gritty of what/where we will be doing/going. There’s still so much to think about. I’m also pretty positive that I will be packing up and moving to Naperville the last weekend of September or first weekend of October. Jesi and I are going to do a road trip and drive everything back there. That way, I will have the whole month of October to plan for the trip/prepare to apply to grad schools for next fall. I already had a possible subletter come look at my loft aka the “elf shelf” today and I really hope she wants to take it. That would make things a lot easier to have that settled so far in advance. I am currently re-reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse so I’m going to hop into bed and learn about Buddha. Goodnight!