I did end up making my deadline of scheduling my itinerary by 30 November, however during November my family suffered an unexpected bereavement. The funeral wasn’t going to be until mid-December and I was dealing with a lot of the paperwork, so as I had only spent a minimal amount on a couple of deposits I asked my boss if I could postpone my confirmation until the New Year when I could find time to finish the costing and make a final decision.
It’s January 2017 and I’m back to work. I had extended my TEFL course (for the second time) and was slowly getting through the remainder of the modules, it would be a race to see if I could complete it by March!
Before Christmas I had a good idea about most of the flights I needed apart from the ones in South America, so conscious that I needed to at least hold these otherwise my plans would fall apart. I paid STA a visit, talked through the flights for the whole trip and paid my Buenos Aires to Rio tour. That was it, no turning back now! The plan is as follows: trekking in Nepal for just under a month, visiting cousins (hopefully) in Singapore for a few days, travelling on the bullet train stopping off in various places before going to the Zen retreat and spending just over two weeks in Japan, over to Nicaragua for about 13 days, then to the Galapagos in Ecuador for some volunteering for two weeks plus a few days, and finally down to Buenos Aires for just under a month to do the final tour in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.
Taking into account spending money I am at the top end of my-budget, but in for a penny in for a pound as the saying goes. Out of the few people I have told about the trip, and not even mentioning money, so far a couple of them out of the blue have offered to lend me money if I need it. I am amazed by people’s generosity and am humbled to know that I have so much support amongst my family and friends.
So I’ve been writing this blog but only one person has read (part of) it because I didn’t want to put it out there until I’ve told certain people outside of my immediate family and close friends; the main ones being my little team at work and my group of work girl friends who I socialise with. By now I had been thinking about this trip for about a year but not said anything, however I’m the type of person who needs to share when I’ve got something on my mind and keeping things to myself has actually been a bit stressful! The reason why I didn’t want to say anything was because at the beginning it was a bit pie in the sky and it wasn’t until now that it was actually real – I didn’t want my team to feel that there was a possibility of my deserting them and then to turn around and say it wasn’t going to happen. I had my annual appraisal booked for mid-January and my boss and I were going to chat about cover arrangements, so I decided that I would tell them after that meeting.
Elizabeth Mooney 