The first breath

Well this is the first time I have ever done something like this.  Putting my life online seems strange to me, but will soon become crucial for contact with people.  Hopefully this will act as a travel journal for me and allow me to keep family and friends up to date on what I am doing when I do not have time to contact people individually.  At least that is how I hope it will work.  Who knows what will eventually happen with it...

So, what is the idea.  Next year (2014) I am looking at travelling to Europe to live, explore, have fun, hopefully get lost, meet people and generally see what else there is outside of these little islands in the South Pacific.  After being told off by a sister for not telling her directly what I was planning, and relying on the family gossip mill (successfully), I thought by making information available here she can check for herself and others can find out too.

So far not much is sorted.  I know that I have to sort out a myriad of things from trips, flights, insurance and money to visas, packing up a life here and saying painful goodbyes.

A general sketched outline of what I plan on doing is, next March pack up and fly to London.  Spend a week finding my feet there and sorting important arrival issues, before spending a couple of months doing a flying tour of Europe's tourist highlights.  To do this I am thinking of doing the "Ultimate European including Egypt" trip offered by Contiki.  A 45 day trip getting a brief introduction to different parts of Europe to see which parts I would like to go back and visit properly.  Afterwards is less clear.  I will head back to the United Kingdom and recover from my disconnect from reality.  Might try to visit some friends and family while trying to sort out a job.  They haven't been warned of this yet, so who knows.  After that is the open sky of possibilities.

Lets see what happens.