And...we're off!! Lauren and I leave on our around-the-world adventure at 1:00am on Thursday, September 8th. As many of you know, we've been scheming since college. The destinations have changed along the way, but the end goal has stayed the same: have an epic adventure (and try to learn some Spanish along the way!). With graduate school looming (hopefully!) on the horizon, it's either now or never.

As soon as I know what blog she'll be updating, I'll post that link here. Twice the fun! I think the internet situation will be favorable for the first half of the trip, so the updates should be (relatively) frequent.

Here's the skeleton itinerary:

Bogota, Colombia (two week retreat to work on grad school applications...haha)

Chile

Peru

Home for Christmas!

Hong Kong (two day stop-over)

Thailand

Cambodia

India

Nepal

United Arab Emirates (one day stop-over)

We've got various volunteer gigs mapped out along the way. We'll be volunteering on an organic farm in southern Chile where we'll help with the spring planting and learn how to make goat cheese! Then we'll be off to hike in Patagonia after which we'll make our way up to Huaraz, Peru. Huaraz is at the base of the Andes (ie: more hiking and even MORE pictures of mountains). We'll be volunteering with an organization that tutors/teaches some of the poorest children in the city. We'll head home for Christmas mid-December and take off again on January 2nd, 2012 for Leg II. (More on Leg II later when Leg II seems a little more like an eminent reality and a little less like an interesting idea).

For the past several days, I haven't gone anywhere without my multi-topic to-do list. It's sitting here on the counter giving me the Evil Eye. Apparently it thinks that I should be doing things like "pack" and "make copies of passport" instead of updating my blog... pshaw!

Crunch time is crazy.

I'll be writing the next post while looking out at the mountains with a steaming cup of Colombian coffee in hand. Oh, and I think our room has a fireplace :)

Thanks for coming along for the ride! Please send emails or comments along the way... it's so good to hear from folks when you're far away.