Suddenly here

Erika--

We've said goodbye to everyone excepting out parents, sat on our packs to close them (we're going to have to ditch something) and wiped our cameras memory cards clean. We can't have forgotten anything, can we? The weirdest thing about travelling is how it actually happens. A girl (or girls) plan for months/years and then suddenly she really gets on a plane and goes somewhere. It was all so hypothetical for so long and then one finds oneself in a foreign land, jetlagged and perplexed, and realizes that one is stuck for quite a while. A sentence like that can only be written in the days preceding leaving. After one or two nights of sleep in Christchurch, I'll be ecstatic. Right now, I'm cautious. Reality is staring me down and I'll admit that I'm blinking.

The purposes of this post are to give you a little more information regarding our plans and to give you our emails so you can be added to either correspondence list you wish. or both, of course.

Here're the details:

*Leaving today at 6.45pm

*Arriving in Christchurch, NZ at 10pm on FRIDAY. yeah, that's right, a day of our lives never experienced, isn't that curious?

*Spending a few days in ChCh and then walking down to a farm on the Banks Peninsula to trade our muscular abilities for food, board and some new insight into organic growing.

*Walking back up to a farm north of ChCh, repeat. etc.

Erika's email is erika.johnson06@gmail.com

Kristen's is rose.kristen@gmail.com

Write us. It gets lonely out there on the road, knowing that everyone's life is going on the same and we aren't there. I know I can't expect sympathy here and I don't expect it but let's just keep in touch regardless.

How's that for a scattered post? Love to you all

And we're off!

It always starts innocently enough; a travel book shows up on the coffee table, an Atlas appears from the library, names of places start being tossed about casually. Soon though, we've started a plan, nothing concrete just a desire to see a place or a tale from a friend that makes us want to take a similar trip, explore something we haven't yet seen. Then it starts to set in, dates start to be tossed about, plans start to be made and soon we're in full stride- off on another adventure.

There's always plenty of obstacles but it seems like this trip has had the most difficulty falling into place. New Zealand and Australia seemed so easy when we first conceived the idea, we were on our last overseas trip, in Thailand, Erika teaching English at a high school in the north and I there as her companion. Our main English speaking TV channel was the Australian Channel and there were so many things that drew us to the country and they made it seem like they really wanted us, specifically, to visit. We came home and settled back into our lives here before trips started to be talked about and our road trips began.
When you can't have a full blown, round the world adventure, road trips are the perfect filler. We live in a rather large country and there never seems to be an end to what you can see and do, places to visit and people to meet.
In the end we continued to come back to our Down Under idea and started to form real plans; we thought we'd go on their 'working holiday' visas, we'd stay for a while and settle into their culture like we'd done before, in other countries and in other cultures. Finally it has, fallen into place, in many ways and in others we're still hammering in the details.

So far our plans are simple enough; three months in New Zealand followed by three in Australia.
We leave the 24th for what seems like at least a hundred hours of travel before arriving in Christchurch where we begin a grand adventure of volunteering on organic farms, hiking, biking and camping through two countries, taking it all in at a slower pace than some of our previous trips.
It may be simpler in our manner and pace of travel but it makes it more exciting in others: what ten items of clothing are important enough to take on a six month adventure? What camping gear is necessary to cram into our pack and how do we get it in there? And are we really fit enough to bushwhack our way through a country?
So far a degree of panic, excitement and denial have led us to believe we can pull off this trip just like any other.