The Big Trip - How did we get here?
At this point our Friends and Family know that Alex and I have quit our jobs to travel for the next year. The question we get most often is, "What made you want to do this?"
When Alex and I first met his dream was to take a year between college and travel for a year...but instead he started college with me. The next summer I was going back to Europe to see my family and asked if he wanted to travel for a few weeks around Europe before school started. We ended up backpacking around 6 weeks and realized we loved everything about it. More than that we loved traveling together.
Every year after we chose somewhere to go, sometimes on a shoe-string budget, sometimes on something a little larger as our careers grew and our time shrunk. Over the last 7 years we traveled to the Bahamas, Peru, Ecuador, Hawaii, Mexico, New York, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Burning Man, Europe (again!) and New Orleans. And honestly it never felt like enough.
South America was the first time we met long-term travelers. It absolutely blew our mind that someone could save enough money to travel that long, let alone quite their jobs and leave everything behind; and after that the thought never went away.
As most people know about the both of us, we're both planners and we had our whole life planned out; when we would buy a house, have kids, where we wanted to live. Time went on and our plans became more fluid; we moved to a bigger city, decided to rent longer, put off having kids. And we never forgot the people we met that lived out their travel dreams. One day it struck me that we had to do it, and we would regret not traveling now when we had the time and desire to get there. Through all of this, I'm lucky to have a partner who's 100% on board with all (most) of the crazy ideas I have.
And so we planned and we hoped and one day everything aligned and the (somewhat) perfect time came. So here we are.
It was a surreal experience, selling everything we owned, saying goodbye to the wonderful people we've come to know in our new city, realizing we didn't have a steady income and we'd have to seriously adjust our lifestyle. Trying to explain why this is a good thing to skeptics and having the people who congratulate us far outweigh them.
A lot of people ask if this is a soul searching journey, if we're hippies now, if we're scared or confused about what we want. To sum it up, its all and none of those things. At the very core of our beliefs, we've been given a wonderful life, we've worked our butts off to get here, and we want to experience everything the world has to offer. Work hard play hard, right? We ARE nervous, we ARE excited, we ARE absolutely, unequivocally sure that we want to do this!
When Alex and I first met his dream was to take a year between college and travel for a year...but instead he started college with me. The next summer I was going back to Europe to see my family and asked if he wanted to travel for a few weeks around Europe before school started. We ended up backpacking around 6 weeks and realized we loved everything about it. More than that we loved traveling together.
Every year after we chose somewhere to go, sometimes on a shoe-string budget, sometimes on something a little larger as our careers grew and our time shrunk. Over the last 7 years we traveled to the Bahamas, Peru, Ecuador, Hawaii, Mexico, New York, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Burning Man, Europe (again!) and New Orleans. And honestly it never felt like enough.
South America was the first time we met long-term travelers. It absolutely blew our mind that someone could save enough money to travel that long, let alone quite their jobs and leave everything behind; and after that the thought never went away.
As most people know about the both of us, we're both planners and we had our whole life planned out; when we would buy a house, have kids, where we wanted to live. Time went on and our plans became more fluid; we moved to a bigger city, decided to rent longer, put off having kids. And we never forgot the people we met that lived out their travel dreams. One day it struck me that we had to do it, and we would regret not traveling now when we had the time and desire to get there. Through all of this, I'm lucky to have a partner who's 100% on board with all (most) of the crazy ideas I have.
And so we planned and we hoped and one day everything aligned and the (somewhat) perfect time came. So here we are.
It was a surreal experience, selling everything we owned, saying goodbye to the wonderful people we've come to know in our new city, realizing we didn't have a steady income and we'd have to seriously adjust our lifestyle. Trying to explain why this is a good thing to skeptics and having the people who congratulate us far outweigh them.
A lot of people ask if this is a soul searching journey, if we're hippies now, if we're scared or confused about what we want. To sum it up, its all and none of those things. At the very core of our beliefs, we've been given a wonderful life, we've worked our butts off to get here, and we want to experience everything the world has to offer. Work hard play hard, right? We ARE nervous, we ARE excited, we ARE absolutely, unequivocally sure that we want to do this!
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