How it all Began
Sunday, January 20th, 2008Well this all began with my boyfriend (Jared) being bored at work one day. He came over to my cubical, which just happens to be right next to his and says, “Lets just take a year off and see the world.” I quickly responded with, “Sure lets do it.” Not exactly what he excepting me to say. I am the more sensible one of the family and from time to time I have to keep his feet on the ground. I am sure he thought I was going to find a reason for us not to go. But 6 months later I am still ready to go. We are going to start this adventure June 2008. Once you make a decision to take a year off, which quickly turned into a couple of years off work, it is hard not to think about it every day. We are absolutely hysterical about where life is going to take us. Although I have to keep telling Jared to stop bothering every person we meet or see and telling them all about our adventure. Although we are super excited about it, I don’t believe every person we meet on street quite has the same enthusiasm as we do.
Let me give you a little back ground on the both of us. Hi I am Maryanne, Jared and I are from the United States. Well at least in the sense that is what our passport says. We both left our home country for greater things. Not saying anything bad about the US, just saying we have chosen not to live there. There is so much to see in this world. And too many Americans get lost in the US and forget that there is a whole world out there.
Now what goes into planning a trip around the world? First off there is lots and lots of reading. I think we have about every book that Lonely Planet has ever written. Ok maybe not every book, but our library is pretty big. We have read lots of blogs of other people’s journeys. Thank you all for writing them. It was truly wonderful reading other people opinions and thoughts of taking a year off. It made us feel a lot more comfortable with our decision. Next comes, thinking about how you are going to fund this adventure. We have been saving for some years now. What we thought at first was going to be used for a new home and money for kids one day has now turned into our travel fund. We figured that we are going to get more out of this trip then any money in the bank is going to give us.
I look forward to writing more to you as our adventure gets closer.
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