Coming together

Pieces are falling into place bit by bit. Things that had been passing fancies are taking form. Anxieties are melting away (but will likely come back bigger and better as the departure date approaches!).

I made the call to Earthwatch to inquire about the Kenya trip in November. I looked at a website for around the world tickets. Good news is it less than $10,000, which, for no reason, I thought it might cost. I emailed a friend to get another friend's email in Perth (the most remote city in the world). I had Tom email contacts in NZ. I emailed the gay, hippy commune in Hawaii (neither gay nor a hippy, and not terribly interested in a commune, but come on, a month in HI for $1000 with all the free yoga and dance I want??!! I'm all over that!) I looked at Amtrak tickets for a Western US trip next spring.

I'm actually thinking that I could get on a plane in September and not come back until April. Wow, that would be VERY unlike me! But when I realized that I had people in Australia (all of whom have stayed at my house at some point), and that I wouldn't necessarily be trolling around the world, homeless, by myself, I began to feel much better.

So here's the thought for the moment--

• Summer in NH, of course. And I don't have to leave in mid-August to come back to sweltering St. Louis. Woo hoo!!! (That may be what I am most excited about in this whole thing.) A week in September clearing trails in Acadia in Maine.
• Fly to England at the end of September in time to make my cousin's wedding on Oct. 4th, and then bumming around playing with family and friends for the month.
• Get to France somehow, and visit friends who will be teaching in Rennes for the year. I probably should contact my godfather who goes to France a lot in the off chance he has an apartment in Paris or something convenient like that. Ditto with Father Miles, the ex-monk distant cousin who works as a, well I don't know what, but he manages a Chateau of a sultan or something somewhere in France.
• Fly to Kenya (which is oh so stable) to chase monkeys in the forest. The forest right near the beach, that is. Then tootle around Africa a little bit. (I really should get a guide book out of the library to suss that out a bit. That and talk to my friend Justin, who would go back to Africa in a heartbeat.) Spend November there.
• December in Australia (by way of somewhere in Asia-- I basically have to go there anyway to get from point a to point b, and I might as well hit most of the continents, plus Jessica says it is really gorgeous. Not too long, though. Maybe.).
• Then to NZ. People think I just won't leave there. Possibly. I wonder if I can sucker anyone to come join me down there as it will be around winter break time. Anyone in grad school perhaps. Anyone already on the west coast...
• January in Hawaii. Good old Dickie let leak that college friends will be renting a house is Kaui (if that's how you spell it) for three weeks in January. Wonder if they want a nanny...
• Here's where is gets even vaguer than it is now... head to central/South America. I've heard great things about language schools in Antigua, Guatemala... $100 for a week of homestay and meals, spanish lessons and salsa (dance, not food). I still want to do a Habitat for Humanity thing, but they only have trips into October up now. Chile looks neat. I have various ex-AFS students in Argentina and Brazil. Who knows.
• The first two weeks of March will be sea-kayaking in Costa Rica. Then a couple weeks playing around on my own there.
• April come home and do a big train trip out west, south first, CA coast, northern route home (visiting my old college roommate in Fargo, whom I have seen ONCE since 1992!).
• Home in time for the operas in May!

At least those are the thoughts for the moment. After going to Alvin Ailey last weekend I am seriously considering scrapping the whole plan, and moving to NYC to become an Alvin Ailey dancer... or groupie. Whichever is easier.

Who knows what I'll be thinking by tomorrow!