Time To Get To Living...

Hello Everyone!

This is my first post! It is 6 days before I leave and I am getting very anxious.  I am trying to prepare the best I can, but I feel like I am caught in between 2 realities right now. One being my life here in the States and the other being this new chapter that I am about to embark on in distance soil.  The unknown has always been a challenge for me. I sometimes make up outcomes and believe them true, until otherwise proven just so I can pretend like I know and quiet down my mind.  As a result, I want to immerse myself in the unknown, find its beauty and conquer that fear.  I have many hopes for this journey, but the biggest of all is to come back safely.  Life certainly catches up to you now doesn’t it? Well, I think it’s time to get to living it…

Here is the skeleton plan for the next year:

I leave on April 3^rd for Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. I plan on meeting up with my friend Alex who lives there. Alex and I met in Amsterdam on holiday and he has visited me in the Bay Area since. Now it is my turn. It is his birthday on April 5^th and I hope to go out with him to celebrate. After that I plan on taking a 6-7 hour bus ride to São Paulo, Brazil to visit another friend of mine, Piero. Piero has graciously offered to take me to his beach house that is 3 hours away from his city. I am very excited for this first week in Brazil, and I think it will be a great transition for me. From that point, my time opens up and I have a very basic itinerary. I hope to be in Colombia in May, Peru in June, Bolivia in July, and Argentina in August. Sheva (one of my best friends from college) is meeting up with me in Peru. She has to take her nursing exams before she can leave the States so her flight may change, but as of yet, she is flying to meet me in Lima, Peru for my birthday on June 1^st! What a great birthday present! I hope it works out. We have planned on traveling together from Peru to Argentina. After Argentina, I have a week layover in Chile and then fly to Hungary to visit Emese and meet up with my mom and sister. Emese lived with our family as a foreign exchange student for over a year when I was nine. Five years later she visited our family again and brought her whole family with her. Now it has been another five plus years and she has requested us to finally visit her! She is getting married this year and possibly will be getting her first home and we want to celebrate with her. So my mom, sister and I plan on spending September in Hungary. From that point my location becomes very undecided. I have made plans with my best friend, Monica, to travel with her in Southeast Asia, but she is not available to do so until January of 2012. This gives me 3 months of freedom to be in limbo anywhere in the world. It is cheaper to fly directly from Europe to Southeast Asia so I may choose that route or I may be in a serious need to touch home. I just don’t know yet. 

So that is where I am at mentally for the next year. I have been planning this for so long that I can barely comprehend it is actually happening. It felt like it would always be in the future. But it is here now and I am ready. Wish me luck!