I guess I should start with a bit of an introduction to how this little plan to travel the world came to be before anything else, right? Well, I guess when I think back to it, this was something that had been put on the back burner for quite awhile. But what really was the catalyst was when some Royals, ladies on my rugby team, mentioned that they wanted to go to London in September for the Rugby World Cup. Of course, when I heard someone talking about traveling, my ears perked up and I was determined to go to London with them. At about the same time, I was struggling with the decision of whether or not I wanted to quit my job at CHAMPS, teaching chemistry. AND, at the same time, I had already backed out of going to Hong Kong with my dad last December and I was determined to go this year. So with a combination of wanting to go to London as well as Hong Kong in the same year and not being completely happy with my current employment, I started to chat more about traveling the world to a couple of friends on different occasions and all of them pushed me to do so. And with a kind of "F*** it. I'm going to do it!" thought, here I was building this little plan in my head.
So fast forward a few months to post-rugby season and a random scrolling through of Groupon - I look through some of the Groupons under the "Getaways" tab and land upon a seven-day trip to Ireland which happened to fall right in September, before the Royals were set to arrive in London. So after reading through the description, I decided to text Ling, a good friend from high school, to see if she wanted to go with me. At the time, it was a half-hearted thought but her immediate answer was an excited yes (as excited as it could sound via text anyway) so I needed to make sure it happened.
Skip ahead to the end of the school year where I finally tell my principal that I won't be returning and I was just finishing up my year lease at the Royal Palace. So now with no job lined up and no place to live, I had every reason to pack it all up and go. So after a month or two since I first mentioned it to Ling, we got on the phone together and purchased our vacation package to Ireland, with my full intention to not board the return flight back to Philly.
Now that I had my flight to Ireland booked, the preliminary things I needed to figure out was when I was getting to London, when I was getting to Hong Kong, and how I was going to travel via little bouts of country hopping to make it back to LA in time for the rugby season. With the flight to Ireland booked and nothing else planned, I started to remember my promise to myself when I first got my passport renewed in 2008. I told myself that by the time it expires in 2018, I want to have it all filled up. So since I started college in 2008, I was determined to travel out of the country (Canada doesn't count). Since starting college, I did get to travel and study abroad but all of that slowed down in the past two and a half years when I started adulting full time. So I got to reconnect with high school senior me recently in planning this trip.
Well that was just a long-winded account of how I decided to start this journey. With a few things set, I also am so glad to have become friends with people who lived outside of the U.S. because where they lived helped me figure out which countries I knew I had to go to among some other random ones. So I started mapping out the path and spent a lot of time looking at maps of Europe and Asia. This trip planning really helped with my world geography because I had no idea which countries were where prior to this. All I knew were the continents that they were a part of and that was it. I guess I was a pretty ignorant American.
But anyway, to the planning bit. My really good friend, Thomas, spent a good amount of time checking out different flights for me after I gave him a rough sketch of countries and dates and it was amazing the amount of information he gave me. I also referenced Kelsey's blog a bit to figure out what to do on my trip which was so helpful! Shout-out to Kelsey! My planning involved many tabs of spreadsheets with color coded rows and random sheets of paper where I wrote possible route ideas and random flight information to determine which route was better or if a country should be nixed or added to the itinerary. So with all that, with a slow bite of the bullet, I started booking flights. It wasn't until the day that I was supposed to fly out to Ireland that I finally finished all the purchases. Now there are some gaps here and there but what's a trip around the world without a little uncertainty? It will definitely be interesting to see what I get myself into these coming months so stay tuned!
So fast forward a few months to post-rugby season and a random scrolling through of Groupon - I look through some of the Groupons under the "Getaways" tab and land upon a seven-day trip to Ireland which happened to fall right in September, before the Royals were set to arrive in London. So after reading through the description, I decided to text Ling, a good friend from high school, to see if she wanted to go with me. At the time, it was a half-hearted thought but her immediate answer was an excited yes (as excited as it could sound via text anyway) so I needed to make sure it happened.
Skip ahead to the end of the school year where I finally tell my principal that I won't be returning and I was just finishing up my year lease at the Royal Palace. So now with no job lined up and no place to live, I had every reason to pack it all up and go. So after a month or two since I first mentioned it to Ling, we got on the phone together and purchased our vacation package to Ireland, with my full intention to not board the return flight back to Philly.
Now that I had my flight to Ireland booked, the preliminary things I needed to figure out was when I was getting to London, when I was getting to Hong Kong, and how I was going to travel via little bouts of country hopping to make it back to LA in time for the rugby season. With the flight to Ireland booked and nothing else planned, I started to remember my promise to myself when I first got my passport renewed in 2008. I told myself that by the time it expires in 2018, I want to have it all filled up. So since I started college in 2008, I was determined to travel out of the country (Canada doesn't count). Since starting college, I did get to travel and study abroad but all of that slowed down in the past two and a half years when I started adulting full time. So I got to reconnect with high school senior me recently in planning this trip.
Well that was just a long-winded account of how I decided to start this journey. With a few things set, I also am so glad to have become friends with people who lived outside of the U.S. because where they lived helped me figure out which countries I knew I had to go to among some other random ones. So I started mapping out the path and spent a lot of time looking at maps of Europe and Asia. This trip planning really helped with my world geography because I had no idea which countries were where prior to this. All I knew were the continents that they were a part of and that was it. I guess I was a pretty ignorant American.
But anyway, to the planning bit. My really good friend, Thomas, spent a good amount of time checking out different flights for me after I gave him a rough sketch of countries and dates and it was amazing the amount of information he gave me. I also referenced Kelsey's blog a bit to figure out what to do on my trip which was so helpful! Shout-out to Kelsey! My planning involved many tabs of spreadsheets with color coded rows and random sheets of paper where I wrote possible route ideas and random flight information to determine which route was better or if a country should be nixed or added to the itinerary. So with all that, with a slow bite of the bullet, I started booking flights. It wasn't until the day that I was supposed to fly out to Ireland that I finally finished all the purchases. Now there are some gaps here and there but what's a trip around the world without a little uncertainty? It will definitely be interesting to see what I get myself into these coming months so stay tuned!
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| This is what parts of my planning looked like thanks to Thomas |
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| Thought my Eurail pass wouldn't get here in time but it did!! |
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