The Other Thursday

I lost my job. Interesting. Sensitive subject. Among a million other things on a busy morning. I leave at noon on Thursday to drive 45 minutes to my second job. I don't work here Friday and Monday it's a holiday. My boss runs into me by accident. "When you have five minutes, we need to talk. No hurry. Some day." Why wait. I'll make five minutes. We close the door, sit down and in a few words I learn that he thinks that he might not be able to give me a leave of absence. [Translation: I will not get a leave of absence.] Immediately an immense sense of relief takes over. "So that means I don't have to come back?! I can stay longer?" I don't say it loud, I just try to understand another stupid rule that neither one of us would have imagined. It is his decision, to grant a leave of absence or not. The usual maximum is for 1 year, it can be longer in special cases. Of course, there is no pay, so the saved money should allow for a replacement. But, it's not like that. Apparently they cannot get somebody else if my position is "saved" for me. Does that mean that I will have to start over? Possibly. Five hours of vacation per month. Start at the bottom, accumulate sick hours and be on probation for several months. No way! I don't say this out loud. We don't have answers and they really want me back. I said for months that I would be happy to let go and hopefully they would replace me with someone better. Everybody laughed at that and said "There's noone better, you know that!" Yes, I know, but there is always hope and they should give their new doctor a chance.

Now it's different, it's real. I promised hundreds that I would be back. I always keep my promises, it's my word and it's enough. I fully expected that during our trip I will get a message that I am let go. No problem. Stuff happens. I wanted to resign, tell everybody that I am leaving and say goodbye. With the whole leave of absence thing the temptation to return to a secure job that I enjoy was too big and too easy. Of course, why not. A sense of betrayal takes over. Why was I lead to mislead a lot of people? Over the next 8 hours I go over many different scenarios. We could stay longer. We could go to South America. We could sell our house and move forever. We could come back sooner. The initial relief is still there mixed with the sour taste of being cheated. I will never start this over. Or maybe. There's always a price on this sort of things and negotiating my salary could bring much more that I would get otherwise. I got four raises in 9 years, always too little too late. By the time I make it home from my other job I know that I will not start over. People will never get the full story but even if they want me back they might not be able to afford me. Should I change my story now and just say a simple goodbye? Certainly I cannot take back what I already said, that's the only painful part. I will not say anymore that I will be back. I will emphasize the "maybe." I want them to let me go with a dish to pass, a song, a little card. Maybe some of my previous colleagues will come over. That would be nice.

The immediate kick is that our travel budget suddenly is $11000 less. I don't lose money, it's a technicality but it's there. The second hit is that we have to plan a much larger reentry budget. It's one thing to come back, go to work and get paid 2-3 weeks later but now I will have to prepare for 2-3 months without income while I will try to make a living.

Ileana comes home shortly after 8, she immediately senses that there is something. "A bad day?" Not really, but it's not good. It would have been so nice to know this four months ago. We did think about selling everything, but I dismissed that, I promised I would come back. "Why can't we sell everything now?" It is too late and we don't really want to do that.  As we talk we both get excited and remember how it all started. It's here: Starting it all. There might be a few months but the prospect of an independent life, a full time private practice, maybe a couple consultant gigs. It's all appealing. Thirteen weeks of vacation per year, a few years of paying all the debt, saving money and taking off again. Ileana will help. She'll be my office manager. Nobody needs to know yet, even if we talk in front of the kids, they don't really pay attention. Before I go to bed, the sense of freedom and relief takes over. It is still a let down but there is nobody to blame and even if I try, I cannot get upset about it. Just excited.

Forgetting to Shop

Dad asked me to sit down and write something that I'll be able to look back on in ten years or so, when I'm twenty six, and see what I was thinking like now, at sixteen. I imagine myself with slightly bigger hips and different clothing sitting and laughing fondly with people at the things I expected and thought and said when I was sixteen. 

I told someone at ATA on Tuesday that we had forty-seven days left, and she says, "For what?"

"We're going around the world." When I looked to see the woman's reaction her face was something like this: O_O

Whereupon I proceed with the general explanation: who is going, where we are going, and for how long. This takes two to five minutes and is generally greeted by "Oh my god," "That's so cool," "What a learning experience," or "OH MY GOD… TAKE ME TOO!" Sometimes one of the questions is a query as to my thoughts on the subject.

To be honest, it seems completely natural to go on a trip for fourteen months with only one backpack per person and no permanent residence. And actually, the non-permanent residence doesn't bother me as much as the backpack has. My logic six months ago for this was that the backpack is small, and I'll only have less than three shirts. Most girls at sixteen have thirty, it seems, so that's one of the absolute necessities I'll be missing while around the world.

While leaving with just three shirts seems very normal and natural to me, it's also a bit scary. What if one of the shirts rips or is lost? What if I stop liking it? What am I going to do when I come back and I need a completely new wardrobe? What if I forget how to shop?

(Translation of the above questions is: "What if something goes wrong? What if I stop liking to travel, or start hating people? How am I going to readjust to "real" life? What about COLLEGE?")

While absolutely every single one of those questions has a simpler or not-so-simple answer (you will not ever forget how to shop. Ever.), it's one of the things that is proccupying me.

Whereas Dad is focusing on finding transportation, location, or housing, and Mom is focusing on photography and phone calls and finishing up at home, and Ileana and Ioan are focusing on having fun and doing schoolwork (in that order), I have to focus on not only schoolwork, but life after, which is a scary prospect and is practically the only qualm I have about the trip. The other one is the basic repertoire of worries any basic traveler has: what if I get sick?

Speaking of schoolwork, I am my own teacher. Mom has tried, for both eleventh and twelfth grade, to give me a good, solid schedule for the fifty weeks or so we're doing schoolwork, but it tends to fall apart in about weeks five to ten. This is because of Standardized High School Tests, also known as the SAT and ACT. Studying for either of these two makes me drop everything else (especially math) and focus on just learning how to read again. I usually come back to schoolwork with about six weeks of back work and an increasingly shortening time frame, which after two to three weeks of inefficiency and an even SHORTER time frame, now requires a complete rethinking of how I'm going to do school.

Generally this results in learning on weekends, procrastination, and a change of location. For eleventh grade I moved from the kitchen table to a desk. For twelfth grade I moved up to sitting in my room on the floor, where I have two to three hour time blocks of one subject every day, plus Khan Academy, which is an online math course where you can win points and badges. These three to four hours of work don't sound like much, but when I'm finished with all that, I then start reading all the books I want to read before we leave. This includes The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Anne Frank, The Odyssey, and the complete works of Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway.

At the beginning of the year, I'd planned to read a hundred books in 2011, but as I caught up, I raised the bar to 150, and then to 175. I hope to read 200 by the time January 1^st, 2012 comes around.

While on the trip, I'll be reading classics like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mircea Eliade, etc. Before the trip, I am focusing on reading the books that I cannot read RTW.

And of course, besides all this, in order to keep myself busy enough not to be lazy, I also set writing goals— things like "get to 80 words per minute," or "type ten thousand words today," or "write a blog entry." This not only exercises my mind, but it prevents me from watching TV, surfing the internet, or otherwise doing unproductive things, because I get caught up in the story I am writing and feel more inclined to finish reading my book or keep writing rather than laze around and do nothing. It also provides incentive for writing a Language outline. (And, surprisingly enough, writing at large speeds does not make my writing better or worse. The only thing that happens is that it comes out better than I expected, which is a confidence booster.)

One of my other goals before we leave is to finish watching the Remington Steele series, which deserves a say in this blog because at twenty six this is probably what I'll be laughing about the most. And also because it's amaaaaaaazing.

The whiteboard that we see whenever we walk in through the back door now says forty five days… we're finishing the ordering of icebreakers, and we have to organize the iTunes library, and the days are steadily creeping down and down and down… I wonder if anyone outside of the family is nervous for us at all. Or are they just excited?

We don't give shots to Jewish priests

We don't give shots to Jewish priests, but we do a lot of other things. We've done something significant for our trip almost every day in the last two months.

Before the end of June, I called a travel medicine clinic in the area. I talked with a nice secretary who took all the information and needed a few minutes to find some slots on their schedule. When I called back a half an hour later she informed me that they decided to change the price from $50 per consultation to "$130 or $150 after July 1st and we don't have any opening until then anyway." Obviously (!), all of us had to have a consultation even if we go to the same places and we have no medical issues of any sort. I made one appointment only, thinking we could apply that information to all of us (we cancelled in the end). We couldn't cover everything there anyway "because Ioan is under 12 he needs to go to a pediatric clinic." The contacts I was given wouldn't see him because he was not their patient and they really didn't know much about travel shots.
We decided to take the matter in our hands. We learned, there are plenty of resources on the internet and we are both doctors. I liked the MDTravelHealth.com. I work in a public health clinic, they give immunizations to people and pets, they have some records of our immunizations. So can we get hep A? "No, because you have insurance you have to go to your primary doctor!" "my doctor doesn't do this", "I know, find another doctor" then "wait a minute, you're a doctor why don't you order the vaccines?" Without getting into too many details, psychiatrists don't usually do immunizations, but -  if I ever decide to start doing that -  I did set up everything, including Friday Fedex deliveries. But it wouldn't have been cost effective for us.
Thankfully one of the doctors at the Primary Care decided to help us and we got 10 shots, unequally distributed from the youngest to the oldest. We covered the hep A and meningococcal vaccine (kids only) and we will stop here. Ileana contacted travel clinics around the world inquiring about their services. At some point one of the girls heard her mispronouncing the word rabies as rabbis and starting picking on her "We don't give shots to Jewish priests!" We decided that we will get the rabies ($35), typhoid ($20) and the yellow fever ($40) in Kathmandu. The rabies are 3 injections and will end up costing $105 compared to $900 here. The yellow fever we don't need until Africa and it would have been $300 here. Per person. We might still get the typhoid here even though it's tough to beat their price. We will get the required booster for hep A at the right time, in Bangkok. A couple of weeks of hard work but we think we figured this out.

The Sony Alpha SLT55 in action

I would hate to be a security guy at Chase following my credit card charges. It seems that they stopped blocking the card for suspicious activity (thanks!). Maybe they improved their software to accept charges from Hawaii, New Zealand, Japan or New York in the same day. Anyhow my credit limit wasn't high enough for this past month so I payed them back several thousands every few days. Overall we spent $12000 since last post. We bought some real gems, the best camera, the newest MacAir, a nook. We sold our older camera, will sell the laptops that we have now and get pretty much even. Comparing my old MacBook Pro with the new Air, you'd never imagine how much 700 grams can weigh. Ileana and the kids got their sandals and some shoes. I got a couple of hard drives and I am trying to figure up my data backup plan. We got another three headlamps. We got trousers, a special trip to REI in New Jersey. We'll always be grateful to Kendra, she spent several hours looking for five pairs of pants and in the end was more excited than us that she found what we needed. She was enthusiastic about our travel plans. She heard about Rolf Potts and his travel around the world with no luggage. "Do you know the vest he had? We don't carry that, but it's pretty cool!" "We have five of them" said Ioan calmly.

We spent the last couple of years researching our luggage for this trip. We hardly bought any new clothes all this time, no electronics, no nothing, except for the trip. Now we have a long list on the white board and we cross items every day. Ileana finished her shopping at Icebreakers, she knew what else we needed. We followed them since last spring and got the items that we wanted during their biannual sales. With the last one, we got some gloves, hats and other pieces of clothing. I did the same thing with Scottevest earlier and got our vests with a 40% discount.

Moving on, we got the first travel insurance. It is perplexing to some of my patients and coworkers, how can you quit work, do you have enough money to pay health insurance? The answer is no, I wouldn't have money for health insurance in USA. It might cost $1200-$1500 per month for my family. It would probably carry several thousands in deductible. Going abroad, I bought the first five months of insurance, travel, health, etc. all for the nice sum of $510. I got it from Worldnomads, the most obvious choice. I was even able to get a coupon for 7% discount. "Sorry - because of federal regulations we are unable to honor that in USA." They offered to donate my $35 discount to one of their humanitarian projects, and now I am glad to support the Teacher Training Program, Solu Khumbu, Nepal. I am sure that the American Congress in its infinite wisdom has a very good reason for denying discounts for international travel insurance. Apparently there is a law in France that forbids stores from offering sales except for a couple of days per year. They all have the sales in the same time. Are the French politicians even smarter than the American ones?

Visas! Another one. I am sure that there is a good reason for those as well. On my reading list, "The Travels of Marco Polo." I am curious how much he had to pay for his China visa. The Chinese pay back to the Americans, adjusting the cost according to the Department of State fees. When they raise it, the Chinese raise back, but it should be noted that they are nice. The Americans take the money first and they keep the money even if they don't give the visa. The Chinese would charge at the end, before they hand you the passport. It costs $140. The rest of the world pays $45. The burmese, vietnamese and north-koreans get it free. There is only one exception: Romanians pay $70 for one entry, $100 for double entry. Not the main reason, but it feels good to be Romanian, second in the world after USA! For those who don't know, a visa is a nice colored printed stamp that gets affixed in the passport. It makes you feel special, a better person altogether. I remember getting the first visa for America 15 years ago. After standing in line for many hours in a freezing winter weather, I got to the interview, passed it and got my passport. My frozen, wet feet didn't hurt anymore. That stamp made me feel above most other people in the room... Back then I believed that! Sadly, I don't feel like that anymore. I had to pay $540 for the privilege of being allowed to spend my money and my time visiting a corner of my planet with my family.

Happy Birthday! See you in Penang.

There are agencies that would charge $50 per person to take the passports to the Consulate. We skipped on that, choosing to make it a 30-hour trip to New York City for my 44th birthday. We visited the Metropolitan and had lunch in the park before going to REI in New Jersey. In the end Kendra told us that we have to go to Penang, Malaysian restaurant, around the corner. We had Penang Satay, Vegetable Dumplings, Pad Thai, Beef Chow Fun, Chicken fried rice, Pulut Hitam. There was a time in the past when I wouldn't have tried anything exotic like that. That time is gone too. I asked the waiter for whatever is their specialty and enjoyed it without any hesitation. We will be in the real Penang in February and we'll compare.

We booked and payed accommodations in the most expensive cities that we'll visit. A nice apartment by the beach in Sydney and a 2 story house in Central Tokyo.  The apartments that I got in Sydney and Hawaii are cheaper than one room in the hotel in my village. The house in Tokyo costs less than the cheapest hostel there. Then I also bought the tickets for the bus from Kyoto to Tokyo. Buying now I could get seats on the standard bus, it will be a tough night but the price for 5 of us is less than 1 ticket on the Shinkansen. They even had reduced prices (by 2.5%= $1.3) for students,  and by 5% ($2.5) for my son as a child under 12.

I decided to end my little romance with an obscure chinese low budget airline. They wouldn't release their schedule for October, even lead me to believe they'll stop flying the Ibaraki-Shanghai route. There is a straight 4 hour flight from Tokyo to Beijing. The direct flight is between $800 and $2400 for an economy seat. We took the $2400 seat paying in British Airline miles plus $80. I only got 4 tickets so far, I need more miles and I'll get those in a few days as reward for all my other expenses. We took the chance that we might be separated with this, but I am sure it will work out fine. We chose to do the right simple thing despite the aberration of China Japan air connection. Of course I also bought some regular plane tickets, a couple flights in Hawaii in March and a flight from Guilin to Guangzhou in January. We are going to Canton! Unbelievable!

I got a $50,000 loan from my retirement account and some new credit cards with 0% interest, one of them for 21 months. Getting the money for the trip is pretty much done. My bank, "the world local bank" decided to sell all its business in upstate New York. The sale would be final when we'll be away and I don't know how I'll be able to work with the new bank. They would have been useless anyhow, they charge 3% for any foreign transactions. I found one bank that doesn't do that but I had to travel 100 miles to show them my green card. They wouldn't allow opening the account online because I am not an American citizen. So I did it. There was a time when the bureaucracy and idiocy of all these things would have affected me. Not any more. I don't know why, but it feels good. I don't care. It's not worth my nerves. I am going on with my plans because I am doing what I have to do. Nothing can stay in our way, we are doing the right thing. The kids are laughing, joking, they are happy, they are excited. Maria is the first one in the morning to get to the board and change the number of days left. Ioan said "I cannot wait to go around the world." Ileana and the kids will return today from the church summer camp and we will get on the last straight line, 50 more days, nothing else until we leave. That's it.

In an unrelated matter, Steve Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO. The Thomas Edison of our generation. People talk about his genius and his achievements. From little that we know about him I think the most impressive lesson is how he chose to live his life and the man he has become. Going again over his 2005 commencement address at Stanford, he uses the world love 10 times and death 6 times. Do what you love. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." He ended quoting Stewart Brand: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

We'll do.

A step

We managed to go and buy sandals. Those who know us remember that shopping is not our favorite way to pass the time. We don’t like the material, the color, the fashion, the store, the crowd, and in general, we lack patience. In Ithaca there is this shop where they sell Birkenstock sandals. What is so special about these sandals? They are manufactured in Germany! Besides that the sole is made from cork (makes them light) and follows the natural curves of your foot (makes them really comfortable).

Ithaca, rush hour. I follow the instructions on the GPS and arrive on a small street with restaurants, agencies and in between them, our “Fontana’s Shoes Store” with two large windows full of different kind of footware. We entered and a young lady greeted us. She invited us to sit on chairs and measured our feet. We explain what kind of sandals we would like (podiatrist recommendation) and while she goes back and forth bringing us different models to try, we look around ourselsves with large eyes, like children in a candy store: so many models, and some of them look even elegant. We don’t lose time and start asking questions about the other brands. Naot? The sole is made from a mixture of cork and plastic. Teva? Just plastic and it’s not as rigid as Birkenstock’s. We sit on our chairs and she adjusts the buckles on the straps, brings different models for the girls because the narrow one is better for them than the normal one. Do you have a different colour? And what’s the difference between the soft footbed and the hard one? It has a thin layer of latex foam that helps the foot adapt easily to this kind of footware. She helps us one at a time and we get up from our chair, walk around the store paying attention to our toes, heels, to the straps, the way they rub the skin, the sole and all those mounds that we could feel under it. The girls are looking at each other, talk in Romanian, they laugh and they are wondering if they really look like twins. Ioan waits patiently for his turn, paying attention to every detail of the process. For him they have only three models, but just one is good on his feet: Keen.

We make our minds up. Four boxes are on the counter.

We take a deep breath... now we need water resistent, all-terrain shoes for the girls and they have to try them with their orthotics. Luckily our help knew what the store could offer us and brought two models for each girl (Ioan didn’t have his orthotics with him). They picked the one that suited them best. Maria was happy because she will not have to shop for trekking shoes for a long, long time.

After two hours, with a headache, but happy we left the store carring six boxes of shoes.

Neun und Neunzig

I found out what the song is about. Growing up in a communist Romania, I turned 17 in 1984. It was probably the first year of dancing, clubs and interest in music hits. One of the best songs of that year was Nena's "99 Luftballons" and ever since the number 99 has a special significance for us. The song it's a fantasy about children who release a bag of balloons in Cold War era Berlin, soldiers think it's an incoming weapon, trigger a nuclear war and in the end one of the children stands in the rubble of the city and finds a single remaining red balloon (wikipedia). It was a protest song, I guess, we didn't know but we loved it.

There's still some room in these bags for a few items.

Ninety-nine days until we leave. We almost finished the luggage, we are ready. Six bags lined up, just a few more items to add.

We had several setbacks and turnarounds but the general attitude is that no matter what it will be fine. Just realized that the China visa will limit us to 30 days at a time. Considering that the time in Tibet is already tight there has to be some sacrifice somewhere. Still trying to get to China from Japan, I found a mysterious airline that flies from an obscure Tokyo airport to Shanghai. We didn't want to go to Shanghai, but we'll take it. It should save at least $1000 for the tickets, but it is another city, another stop. What do we cut?

We bought our tickets from Australia to Hawaii. Eleven days, two 10-hour flights, another expense, two more crosses of the Equator. We'll be there at the end of March and back in Sydney on April 1st. Don't ask why, it could be a never ending discussion. Why do we need borders and passports?

So we swapped Hawaii for New Zealand's Northern Island. What would you do? We'll take it and have a fabulous time.

I booked the campers. Apparently this is the way to go in New Zealand and Australia and for us it is surely the cheapest accommodation. But it's more than this, it is one major attraction for all of us. Two weeks in New Zealand, supposedly giving us the freedom to not plan ahead. Two weeks in Australia, two bookings, a 4WD for Uluru that should let us get off the sealed road and a fancy camper that should take us to Darwin. With a pretty tight schedule we couldn't wait for an unlikely deal at the last moment, just got the early booking discount.

No further plans after Kuala Lumpur on June 1st. I tried to believe it, I said it out loud, shared it with everybody and it didn't work. The word "Paris" has some special power over me, I feel it in my chest, I choke and my knees melt. And more. AirAsia had another sale, we thought for a few minutes and we'll be in Paris in June 2012. It was one of the options in the first place, Paris, London or Johannesburg. It's all about visas, embassies and flight connections. Don't get me started.

I'm wondering if I'm over-planning. I never bought a plane ticket at the last minute, I would love to go to the counter and get whatever is left, any destination available, just go. I will do it at some point, but for now it's just not realistic. I made a lot of reservations and our schedule is filling little by little. Almost all of the hotel bookings are for the cheapest price in a great location with free cancellation. Almost all the plane tickets are for a fabulous price and non-refundable. We'll just forfeit something if it doesn't work. I'm not over-planning, there's just so little time left and I really don't want to spend this trip looking for Internet and accommodations. I already lost a great apartment in Kyoto by a few minutes. Only ninety-nine days. I have to learn German. Neun und Neunzig.

This is the English translation of the song:

German Text: Carlo Karges

Translation: Hyde Flippo

Musik: Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen

Have you some time for me,

then I'll sing a song for you

about 99 balloons

on their way to the horizon.

If you're perhaps thinking about me right now

then I'll sing a song for you

about 99 balloons

and that such a thing comes from such a thing.

99 balloons

on their way to the horizon

People think they're UFO's from space

so a general sent up

a fighter squadron after them

Sound the alarm if it's so

but there on the horizon were

only 99 balloons.

99 fighter jets

Each one's a great warrior

Thought they were Captain Kirk

then came a lot of fireworks

the neighbors didn't understand anything

and felt like they were being provoked

so they shot at the horizon

at 99 balloons.

99 war ministers

matches and gasoline canisters

They thought they were clever people

already smelled a nice bounty

Called for war and wanted power.

Man, who would've thought

that things would someday go so far

because of 99 balloons.

99 years of war

left no room for victors.

There are no more war ministers

nor any jet fighters.

Today I'm making my rounds

see the world lying in ruins.

I found a balloon,

think of you and let it fly (away).

Why Facebook

I love Facebook. Maybe for the same reasons as most other people. I love that I hear from long lost friends, people who completely disappeared on the other side of the world. I love that I can see what my daughter is reading, what the other one is listening to, what video clips my nephew discovered and so on. Our children's friends and our friends' children share funny pictures and stupid tests. I can share an article on The Economist without having to send emails around. I can easily find out what Shakira did yesterday...

But mostly I love that I don't really have to work on this. I can screen through hundreds of posts in a couple of minutes and I don't have to click delete or like or send a reply. When the mouse reaches the bottom of the page it loads more posts. Nobody really expects me to get back to them and they don't need to get back to me.

Why then have I sent tons of posts around, begging friends to vote for our page "Noi6 Around The World?" Apparently if I get 25 likes I can get an userID for our page. I don't know how that would make things different. The Facebook page should help as a feed reader. We have a blog at http://noi6.blogspot.com. Today it has 700 days since the first post. Ileana started a separate blog at http://dejurimprejur.blogspot.com. I still don't know how we will use our blogs. Ileana's is in Romanian only to make it easy for our family members who don't speak English. They wouldn't know how to use a feed reader, they might not remember to look for new posts and would definitely be put back by the mixture of English and Romanian. On my blog I will mix English and Romanian and hope that the English readers will put up with it. But everything will be linked on Facebook. We might post every day or every week or every now and then. We try to keep it slow at this point, despite making a lot of progress in our plans, still nothing is happening, we only leave in 135 days. On the other hand, on Facebook I can post short, quick updates. I spend many hours reading about travels and I run into other interesting resources. Facebook could be a perfect vehicle to share that. I don't want to increase my number of friends there and I don't want to decrease my privacy settings. Having a page accessible to everyone would keep things separated. Having a two way communication with people posting on our wall or sharing pictures is another possible benefit. And in the end, I am sure that there will be some family that will get inspired to follow their dreams after reading our notes. On Facebook ;-)

We decided early that we need to document our thoughts and keep track of how they evolve. A diary is good for that and nobody needs to read a diary. But in the 21st century nobody writes for the drawer. Everything is out there and we should feel comfortable with that. But of course, we don't. We need to learn how to overcome our fears and our nature. We have to share the wealth of information accumulated and what more will come. We read thousands of pages of family blogs regarding family travel for a year or so around the world. Sometimes we discovered links to some blogs that were kept private. It was frustrating and hurtful. What do they have to hide? We felt cheated when some stopped updating their sites and sometimes when they would only put updates every couple of months. They should keep their end of the bargain. I subscribed to their blog and they should keep me posted. At least on Facebook.

We are going to travel as a family around the world. It is something special. Everybody knows this. Especially if I define "special" as being other than usual. Hopefully it would also be "special" in the way of "something distinguished by some unusual quality and being in some way superior" (Merriam-Webster definitions). Even being able to dream of this proves how lucky we are. But we probably wouldn't be here if it wouldn't be for some others who did it first and proved that can be done. They came back, better, stronger, happier. And as far as I know everybody said "I would do it again in a heartbeat!" They shared their experiences and wrote books about it. They started programs or joined organizations that promote travel. Some never stopped, continuing to travel in open ended fashion. They feel that travel makes them better people and makes this world better. I cannot agree more.

[Paragraphs self-censored because they were too serious][...] After a couple of days I got the Facebook userID and now we have a direct url http://facebook.com/Noi6RTW. We can print it on a business card.

I estimate that I told more than 300 of my patients that I am leaving in October. I estimate that 99% of responses where positive. Explaining to them I understand better why we have to do it. People are happy for me and for my children and praise me for doing this. My leaving will affect their life, sometimes dramatically, but they respect my right to do what I feel I have to do. Some people remembered similar experiences with their parents and how much it changed their life. Always in a positive way. Some people wanted to do something special with their children but never got to it. A lot of people said "you only live once." (!?) Some people say that they will travel vicariously through us, maybe on this blog, maybe on Facebook...

A.M.R.

Mă pregăteam să ies din unitatea militară în care îmi făceam săptămâna obligatorie de armată, când soldatul de la poartă m-a întrebat: Cât ți-e amereul? Continuând să merg, încercam să îmi dau seama ce ar putea fi amereu... Au Mai Rămas atâtea zile până la eliberare.
Pentru noi 138. Azi. Mâine vor fi 137. Ca și în armată timpul pare că abia se târăște. Starea lucrurilor se prezintă așa: se pare că vom închiria apartamentul de deasupra biroului (nu avem încă un răspuns definitiv) și casa noastră.
Studiem zilnic despre locurile în care urmează să ne ducem și la masă discutăm motive pro- și contra-.
Bagajul are un colț de casă unde depozităm toate obiectele pe care dorim să le luăm cu noi și grămada crește.
Chineza a mers ceva mai greu, pentru că cursul de la iknow.jp se axează numai pe semne, nu îmi oferă suficientă practică pentru citit și aproape de loc pentru scris. Am schimbat pe cartea Modern Mandarin Chinese for the begginers de Monika Mei, care a scris-o pentru turiști și ca urmare mă învață cum să comand suc, cafea, rață, să întreb cât costă, etc.
Cu excepția a două călătorii avem toate biletele de avion pentru primele șase luni din călătorie. Cincizeci de bilete pentru aproximativ o mie cinci sute de dolari! Acest lucru i se datorează lui Mihai care supraveghează noapte de noapte site-ul de web Air Asia si află de diferitele sale-uri și are răbdare să introducă informațiile despre noi. Și tot lui i se datorează și faptul că știm pe unde o să mergem și când. Citeam despre Angkor Wat și urmărind link-urile de pe wikipedia am aflat că o sa prindem Anul Nou al lor chiar când vizităm noi templul și vor avea dansuri și spectacole în cinstea acestui eveniment. Foarte bucuroasă i-am comunicat și lui acest lucru. Reacția lui: normal, eu am făcut programul.
Școala trebuie împinsă de la spate, dar nu are cine. Eu ar trebui să fac asta, dar eu m-am desprins de școala lor cu mult timp în urmă, când am terminat să le fac programarea. În plus de asta a venit un val de căldură care ne toropește mințile.

Ce mai avem de făcut? Eu învăț să fac fotografii mai frumoase. Tatăl meu a fost operator de imagine și a încercat să mă învețe abc-ul fotografiei. Nu s-a prins de mine decât ceva superficial. Sony alpha 100 e un aparat bun care mi-ar permite să fac niște fotografii speciale, dacă aș ști să umblu cu el.
Am de cusut fustele fetelor și pânzele de țânțari.
Avem de adus la zi vaccinările din America (cele pentru febră galbenă și turbare ne gândim să le facem la o clinică în India, unde ne-ar costa mai puțin de 800$ de persoană).
Și încă multe alte lucruri care depind de închiriatul casei și la care nu vreau să mă gandesc.