April 11, 2007
About three months ago, David and I "celebrated" our 10th anniversary. We would have celebrated it, without quotes, had we remembered it, but it wasn't until 10:30 at night that David interrupted himself and said, "Wait, isn't today our anniversary?" I replied that it couldn't be, because 5 hours previously, sitting down at the computer, I thought, "I have to remember our anniversary is on Tuesday." I have no idea why I suddenly thought we started dating on the 9th and not the 7th of January, but I'm guessing after a decade of remembering not just your own stories, but someone else's too, your memory suddenly deserts you.
David suggested that in order to make up for our forgetfulness, we should celebrate for the entire year. That suggestion very quickly morphed into traveling for the entire year, so here we are: planning a round-the-world trip starting May 15, and returning sometime next May, or maybe June. We can't actually buy return tickets until we've been gone for a few months because airlines only put their schedules up 10 months in advance, a fact I find somehow incredibly amusing.
Those of you more inclined to explore websites in your free time may noticed the added Map and Calendar feature on the right sidebar. David's been working within Google's applications to do all sorts of neat things, both for this trip and for previous excursions, so you can poke around to your heart's content, but in addition, here's a brief itinerary of the RTW.
We leave May 15 for London, where we don't plan to stay, but will scoot up to Scotland for a week of hiking and camping. Then my entire family will join us in Edinburgh and we'll travel together for 2 weeks. Then the poor saps who have jobs will return to the states, while those of us who are gainfully unemployed (retired or otherwise) will travel in England for another 2 weeks, before David and I callously leave Mama and Papa to their fate and head off to Madagascar at the end of June. (I'm so excited!) Then we go to Italy to see friends for a couple of weeks before leaving for Doha, Qatar, for a week. We have no idea what we'll do here, but it should be fun! Then it's off to India for two months and Malaysia for three weeks before arriving in Australia the day before Christmas. We're currently stuck there, because of the airline schedule posting problem, but we plan to stay for about 6 weeks before going to New Zealand for another 6 weeks and then to Argentina for about 2 months.
Happy anniversary to us!
