Locks of Love

I’m back in Naperville, IL counting down the days until the big departure date. My countdown consists of when I’m leaving to go visit Leia in LA (10 days), and when I’m leaving the country (14 days). In two weeks time, I’ll be basking in the Merida sun in Mexico. It still does not seem real.

My last weeks in NYC were hard, at best. I took advantage of all of my friends who gave up their sleep time to stay out with me until 4am on many an occasion! Katie even gave up two whole weeks of going to the gym to stay by my side, like a sleeping baby in my palm like a leaf. Saying goodbye to my work friends was impossible, and I managed to go all out at my “see you later” party. It’s nice having co-workers who bought me shots of Patron to make the goodbyes so much easier. I don’t need to say much more about leaving NYC (for the time-being anyway). It clearly just wasn’t fun. I’m going to miss everyone so much!!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS!

I’ll leave the paragraph with a great Thomas Wolfe quote: “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”

Being back with my family/home friends is great too though and just had an awesome weekend with Katie & Greg & Annie & Tom in Chi-town. We played tourist the whole time and went on the double decker bus tour with the best tour guide ever- Betty, who even showed us such important Chicago landmarks as the Indian restaurant to our left, the McDonald’s to our right, the Chinese restaurant to our left, and the bullet hole you rub your finger inside for good luck to the right. She was incredible!!! We spent a lot of time in my parents loft in Bucktown, about which Tom said, “I like this loft so much, I think it’s mine.” Direct quote!! While wandering around Old Town, we were astounded at the crazy bargains of real estate in Chi-town compared to NYC. It’s like half the price!!! Unbelievable.

As far as trip preparation goes, I’ve been really buckling down and getting stuff done. First off, I totally chopped my hair off! 12 inches to Locks of Love. I was really nervous to do it, since I loved having long hair, even if it was “scraggly,” but am thrilled that it’s gone. It’s so travel-friendly and will certainly make washing it easier in those freezing cold showers! Besides from giving up some hair, I’ve also pretty much have my bag all packed. I’m still working on getting rid of some stuff, but I think I’m pretty close. My medicine is the real problem! I’m all squared away with my clothing (very little of it!) but 7 months of malaria pills sure take up a lot of room, on top of my allergy pills & everything else. Need to work on that. My friend Sheli who I traveled the east coast of Australia with said we can stay with her in Buenos Aires, so I might mail some stuff I won’t need until January there to pick up. That will be very helpful.

Nothing else really exciting to report, so I’ll leave it at that for now. You can always email me at jillylawrence@gmail.com too and I’ll do my best to get back to you from the road, but I’m going to try to not be addicted to internet cafes as I’m traveling. Please write anyway though! A lot!!!

xoxox

 

Living on the couch

Please don’t get all excited and expect that it will be this long between posts while I’m actually on the road- you’ve lucked out by not having to read this for awhile people, but do not think it is going to become the norm. So, I’m back on the blog and a super lot has happened. For one, I’m writing this from my couch and not the desk in my “elf shelf” (for those who don’t know, I live in a lofted room with ceilings not QUITE tall enough to allow me to stand up ala the 7th 1/2 Floor from Being John Malkovich). The lovely Tamra has moved into my room, thereby lowering my rent to save some bones for this long trip. It’s only for a month and I plan on not being home a lot, so it should all work out. For the record, my last day of work at The Weinstein Company is now going to be September 28th, a very sad day for me indeed. I will miss my TWC-ers like nobody’s business. That leaves me an entire week to do nothing except for see all of my NY friends until I finally leave NYC on October 6th to go to Chicago. This brings me to my currently planned flights:

October 26th
Chicago to Los Angeles (to visit Leia & rendezvous with Deirdre)

October 31st
Los Angeles to Mexico City (we will visit some of Deirdre’s Mexican friends she made while au pairing in France)

November 6th (Happy birthday Dad & Leia!)
Mexico City to San Jose, Costa Rica (visiting MORE of Deirdre’s friends in Costa Rica- I love her worldly connections)

November 16th
San Jose to Quito, Ecuador (where we will be doing a cruise around the Galapagos & checking out the rainforest!)

December 5th
Quito to Lima, Peru

December 6th
Lima to Cuzco, Peru (Machu Picchu)

December 14th
Cuzco to Lima

December 15th
Lima to Santiago, Chile

December 16th
Santiago to Rapa Nui AKA Easter Island

December 23rd
Easter Island to Santiago

January 28th
Sao Paola, Brazil to Trivandrum, India (studying at an ashram for 2 weeks and then training it up north through Goa, Mumbai, Delhi, Agra, up to Nepal and back down to Delhi)

March 26th
Delhi to Bangkok (to do all of SE Asia & Malaysia)

June 22nd
Singapore to Bali

Then in August- either back to the US of A or to Marseilles for Julia & Romain’s wedding on August 23, 2008!

Isn’t that insane?! AHHH- now we just have to figure out what will be happening in all of those places and our routes, etc. I like that these dates are somewhat open ended. We’ve actually already had to change some flights around, and while it has cost money, it’s beans compared to what purchasing the tickets ourselves would cost.

I’m out for now brown cow.

 

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!