Larus Occidentalis

So in 30 days, we're going to leave.

Do I feel excited?

Honest answer: No.

And why is that? you may ask, as you violently murder me in a fit of demonic rage. Why are you not frothing at the mouth at the prospect of hot Australian boys?! (Well, now that you mention it, they are pretty mouth-watering....)

But the reasons for my lack of behavior that is frighteningly similar to that of a hyper puppy are these:

1. We've always travelled. It's a pretty much taken for granted now. And the fact that we are going to travel some more is no where near as exciting as you think it would be. Especially since that's all we've been hearing at dinner, lunch, and sometimes breakfast for the past year or so.
          *In regard to breakfast: I prefer my morning hours with minimal human contact. Unfortunately, there will be many morning hours and much socializing with my, more often than not, sleep-deprived sister. The conversation will be as follows:
     Maria: "What are we going to do today? Because according to My Schedule, I have to do this and this and this and this and—oh my God! I almost forgot! I have to do that! And then I have to write fifteen thousand words by lunch and—"
     Ileana: "SHUT. UP. RIGHT NOW. OR I WILL USE MY SPOON TO STRANGLE YOU TO DEATH."
          Needless to say, I am not a morning person. This is easily concluded by the fact that I clearly forgot that death by spoon is nowhere near enough to stop Maria and Her Schedule. We must also feed her tongue to various exotic birds (this will be complicated, as birds are evil and exist to ruin humanity's—for lack of a better word, peaceful—existence).

2. My friends! Where will my friends be? Here! With their friends! And they will be saying, "Oh, look at Ileana, over there in Australia with the hot surfers. She is so lucky. I wish I were Ileana. Especially because of her sexy hair. Her hair is very sexy." And at that moment I will be speaking with one of the hot Australian surfer boys when, all of a sudden, my über-flirty comment is suddenly thwarted by über-unflirty hiccups. Which is just as well, because he will assume I am cold, and give me the sexy shirt that has been warmed by his sexy abs that have been acquired through surfing and being Australian.
          *In Romania, there is a superstition/saying/whatchamacallit. When you hiccup, it's because someone's talking about you. Usually they are nice things. Alternatively, when you bite your tongue or the inside of your cheek, they're saying mean things. Do I believe this? Yes. Yes I do.


3. As a kid, I watched Scooby Do fanatically, despite the "scary monsters" (funnily enough, Disney gave me nightmares). And so, there I'd sit, gazing at the TV, thinking, "When I grow up, I want to be Daphne, because she's so pretty and so brave." It turns out, though, that I'm Velma. Not that I'm incredibly smart (that's Maria), but, like Maria, I can't see more than a eight inches from my face. So there we'll be, celebrating Chinese New Year in Hong Kong and BAM! There goes my contact! Where is it? Is it in my eye? Is it on the ground? Cue killer headache: one eye is blind and the other is fine. Did I bring spare contacts? Yes, I think I did—wait, no, they're at the hotel. Oh shizzle. So after ten minutes with tears pouring from my blind eye (it's jealous that it can't see), completely ruining my makeup, I give in and throw the other one away too. Then, regretfully, I will put on my glasses and my sight will be restored, at the very painful cost of my looks.

4. We'll still be doing school on this trip. Which is cool, I'll have something to do when I'm not reading old books in foreign languages (try to read Romeo & Juliet without Sparknotes. Chances of success are zero to none.), but this school that I'll be doing is math and physics. And I really don't like math. But if you like it, then I don't like you either. And physics are only necessary to physisists. I don't actually know what those are, and according to SpellCheck I made them up.

5. And finally, the fifth reason why I'm not jumping around like I'm on some sugar rush: the lack of internet. Oh, woe betide any addict who is removed from their internet! (Not that I'm an addict. Or attached to some ridiculous website involving a mysterious combination of books and faces.) But yes. The lack of internet. I will sorely miss it when I am off on a life-changing adventure, being attacked by vicious Larus Occidentalis* while I'm being über-flirty with hot Australian surfers (at least until I'm back at the hotel), and I'm not sure how I'll survive. I mean, they have pretty sharp claws. But until then, I will prepare myself for this scarcity of internet-socializing. (What? Spend all my time watching YouTube videos? I would never do that! Even if they involve certain British boys with names that rhyme with barley-is-so-cool-like.)


Well, that's that. I'm sure I'll look back on these fears and laugh saying, "How could I ever have thought the birds would refuse to eat Maria's tongue? They thought it was very delicious! However, they did want mine too... that was awkward...."

Ciao, until next time!



*Laridus Occidentalis is the scientific name for seagull. The reason seagulls were chosen above all others is revealed in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds. This explains my deep-seated belief that birds are from hell.

Our Recipe

The recipe to go around the world is a simple one; it doesn't require many ingredients, but it needs time.

The key element is the decision. Without this, you don't get anywhere. We have the desire to travel, the desire for change, the desire for new things, but until we asked ourselves how important this was for us, when we could do it, what it requires, we couldn't make a decision.

It is nice to have a partner who'll support your plans, or shares the same idea. He/she will help you through your moments of doubt, assure you you're not crazy, bring you back to Earth when you dream with your eyes open, keep you on track, remind you why you're doing what you're doing, hold you in his/her arms when everything seems to go wrong, be there for you and your accomplishments.

After that you need a plan. You can establish how much money you can save a month and find your leaving date, or go the other way: decide when you're leaving, and do everything in your power and much more to make it happen. We looked at how much we're earning, how much debt we have, and where we can make cuts.
We renounced restaurants and started cooking those fancy dinners at home
                         television (we weren't that interested in the programs and the advertising was horrible)
                         movies (we subscribed to Netflix)
                         fashionable clothes and shoes
                         gifts (we knew way ahead what we where going to get)
                         hairdresser; I'm the only one who's spoiled this way (since we moved to the States, I am the barber/ hairdresser of the entire family) and I still go for a haircut, but I dye my hair at home.
                         vacations. This is the third year that we're doing school over the summer so we will be able to finish lots of subjects and leave with as little school as possible (math and science)

The positive side is: we ate healthy, the kids were implicated in the process, and it made them open to new foods
                                we read more; many books were about the places we are going to see
                                we watched documentaries
                                we had time to understand what kind of shoes and clothes we need in this trip
                                the children became more mature; they learned to keep their eyes on the prize, to scrutinize their reasons, to express their wishes, to listen till the end the explanations of the answer NO and accept it, and to put things in perspective
                               we became a tightly-knit family

Another important thing is to be consistent, and this is the most difficult part. In time, there are many temptations and excuses for not being able to put aside that sum of money, because today you want that shirt, because you want to get out for a nice dinner that somebody else cooked, because this life of deprivation drives you crazy. I will answer your question: yes, we've strayed from time to time, but started again, convinced that it is worth it.

On top of everything else comes the patience as you're inching your way toward D-day, the effort to live your life in the present, to participate, to find happiness and satisfaction in a smile, or a hug, in things that money can't buy (for everything else, there's MasterCard).

Decision, Partner, Plan, Consistency, Patience, Time.
Now you need to put a title to your recipe; ours is called "Recipe for Going Around the World."

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.

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.

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

We had several setbacks and turnarounds but

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.

I was leaving the military unit in which I was doing my required week of military service, when the guard soldier asked me: “What’s your CD?” I continued to walk thinking: “What is a CD?… Count Down to liberation from military!” Our CD is 138. Today. Tomorrow it will be 137. As in the army, the time crawls by.

We are in this situation: it seems that we are going to rent the apartment above the office (we don’t have yet a firm answer) and our house. Daily we study about the places that we are going to visit and at meals we discuss arguments for and against.

The luggage occupies a corner of the house and we deposit there everything that we would like to take. It grows. Studying Chinese was not what I envisioned on iknow.jp because they concentrate on the signs and they don’t offer me enough practice for reading and almost nothing for writing. I changed the source to Modern Mandarin Chinese for begginers by Monika Mei, a book that she wrote for tourists and so, I can learn how to order juice, coffee, duck, how much does it costs, etc.

With the exception of two legs we have the plane tickets for the first six months of the trip. Fifty tickets for aproximately $1500! This is because Mihai surveilles AirAsia’s website everynight and finds out about sales and he has the patience to upload all the information about us. And also because of him we know where we are going and when. When I was reading about Angkor Wat and following the links from wikipedia, I learned that we are going to be there when they have their New Year and so we will see dances and shows for the event. Excited, I told him about my discovery. His reaction: sure, I planned it this way.

The school needs to be pushed, but there is no one to do it. I should do it, but I lost track long time ago, after I finished scheduling what they have to study from where. And above everything we have a heat wave that melts our minds.

What do we still have to do? I learn how to take better pictures. My father used to be director of image and he tried to teach me the abcs. I have retained only superficialy. Sony alpha 100 is a good camera which would allow me to take special photographs, if I would know how to use it.

I have to sew the girls skirts and the head nets against bugs.

We have to do the vaccinations part here in USA (those for yellow fever and rabies we’re thinking to do them in India or somewhere where they would cost less then $800 per person).

And so many other things that depend on renting the house and I don’t want to think about them.

Fifty Tickets In 24 Hours

Three months after deciding the departure day. Less then five months until we leave we find ourselves closer and closer, sometimes too close. We bought the first tickets for an amazing price, breaking our trip in two, Asia until February 29, then New Zealand and the rest. In March I bought the first leg of our trip. Another great deal, taking us from New York to Osaka. In April I bought another three tickets, from Kochi, in the South tip of India, to Kuala Lumpur, then to Guilin, Hong Kong, Macau and back to Kuala Lumpur on January 27. It was a quick and impulsive decision, but we wanted more time in China, we wanted Hong Kong, we initially wanted to avoid the Chinese New Year. Then we realized that we actually want it in the craziest, busiest, most crowded place we could imagine, so we will be there for it. That wasn't anymore a time to look for cheap tickets, I think I justly assumed that the closer it gets the higher the price so we got the tickets and even reserved 2 rooms in Hong Kong for 3 nights and payed for 2 nights in Macau! Then we took a long break. We bought more things for the road, we bought some books, we read some more and went on with our life. We kept talking about it. We answered some questions, took some decisions, postponed some others. We are stuck (for now) trying to decide how to get from Tokyo to Beijing. Considering that the cheapest one-way direct ticket is more than $2000 (even more for return ticket), I have to come up with an alternative.

People ask me if I am excited. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I explain that "travel is the saddest pleasure", at least planning for it. This is a quote from Paul Theroux, I will read something by him at some point. It makes sense. With the whole world and "all the time" to see it, we find ourselves constantly making sacrifices, eliminating things, giving up on some dreams. Every yes for a destination involves a no for several others. Deciding to go to China a second time means no Laos, Burma, or Northern Thailand. No Vietnam. Going to Xining means no Chengdu and so on. More days in Tokyo means no to Hiroshima and South Korea. So I explain it sometimes, but I'm not sure if I get my point across and I wouldn't blame them, nice problem to complain about. We set some dates to break our trip in different stages. Then we break it further apart, leaving room for decisions on the road. Anything could change at some point and we just need to know our options. How can we tell if we'll survive India? How long should we stay there? We all are very excited, very eager to discover it and a bit scared. How long should we stay in Nepal? Every extra day there would take a day away from India. So we decided not to decide anything. We'll cross Himalaya on December 3rd and then six weeks later we'll have to catch a flight 2200 km away. That's 1340 miles by air, but it will be much more and much slower by land. We are all confident that we will make it somehow.

Last week I started to hear rumors that AirAsia is having the yearly sale. Tons of tickets for 10 cents for travel from February 6 to June 20, 2012. We had to decide quick on a day to leave Australia, that being one of the most expensive tickets. We did that and starting Monday night I bought 50 tickets in 24 hours. I also worked for 12 of those hours, slept for 4 and else. After getting the Darwin to Bali ticket on May 8, I decided to buy a ticket from Penang to Kuala Lumpur on February 29. Then I had the "great" idea to try to fly from Bali to Yogyakarta, no direct connection, but who cares. I bought tickets from Bali to Jakarta, then return Jakarta - Yogyakarta. After another hour or so, I decided that we really don't want to spend any time in Jakarta so I got tickets to Singapore, one year from today. Initially they were $2.42, but until I made my mind they were gone. Finally I found 4 tickets for that price, and got another one for $25. It was enough for the evening, it was after 2 am. I went to bed still trying to solve some puzzles. Next morning at 7, I bought tickets for Thailand, leave Bangkok to go to Krabi (February 8), return on February 22 to fly to Penang. I went to work and when I got home I bought the tickets from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Funny, the tickets were listed as 7-8 cents, but the final cost with all the taxes and convenience fees was $215. Still a good price for 5 tickets. At this point Ileana said STOP! I was done anyhow! I got 50 plane tickets for a little over $1500. Average of $30 per flight, that's a decent price especially considering that most of it is in fees. $200 of that is just the luggage cost, for just 2 bags.

Overall an amazing thing, we now have 15 flights bought and still plenty of open dates in our calendar to make our plans as we please. There are some missing links, three more mandatory flights, two optional ones and we are set with the air transport until June 1st. The first 230 days of travel. After we are done in that half of the world, assuming that we want to go on, we will most likely move to Africa. I'll write more before that...

The World Is Coming To The End

A young Englishman married his fiancee in London this Friday. A million people celebrated in the streets and about 2 billion people watched the wedding on their TVs. They kissed twice! So there is one good thing happening and everybody clings to it, they don't really have much else.

Cambodia and Thailand are fighting at their border. There will be elections in Thailand later this year and the politicians and the army are likely using this issue for political advantage. So they kill a decent number of soldiers and flatten some of the temples they are fighting about. "What is not in doubt is that this won’t be the last time that Thailand and Cambodia lob shells at each other over the border. They have been tussling over this land for many years, and politicians know better than to be reasonable and generous in a situation like this." (the economist) We plan to cross that border somewhere south from where they fight.
Earlier this year there was a major earthquake in Christchurch and we bought our plane tickets there two weeks later. Maybe some people didn't hear of Christchurch before, but when we mentioned it, they knew now: "this is where the earthquake was, right?" And then there was another major earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown in Japan and a few weeks later we bought our tickets to Osaka. So when we said something we left some people speechless.
A tibetan monk sets himself on fire to protest against the Chinese occupation, China closes some areas for tourists "because of the unrest" but we are still going to Tibet. India eliminates American companies from the 10 billion bid for fighter aircraft as they arm themselves to be better able to fight (who?). People are arguing back and forth about the reasons for this and the American ambassador to India will retire for "personal reasons". Nobody cares how much 10 billion could do to help some poor people or some hungry children, we need war planes.
There is a guy in Syria who is killing innocent Syrians en gros and the world is watching and not doing anything about it. There is a guy in Libya who kills Libyans and the world wanted to help so they went there to kill some Libyans too. We might have to skip Syria next year. We knew that we wouldn't be able to go to Libya, but now, who knows?
Tornadoes happen in US and 340 people are killed in one day because they didn't listen to their radios, or they listened but didn't act on it.
As the price of fuel jet goes up, AirAsia restores some fuel surcharges and will make our plane tickets more expensive. Meanwhile America is recovering from recession but continues to manipulate the data about inflation and subsequently the dollar value will continue to go down and the price of oil will continue to go up. We will have less money on our trip. So what?
Annette just told me the other day that she knows that it is the end of the world, some guy who died and went to hell returned to tell his pastor and then the pastor went to Texas and died in a car accident. At least with this theory it all makes sense now, I have one less thing to worry about.

According to Britney Spears latest single we still have until December 21st 2012 - "till the world ends". She recommends that we keep on dancing. We will keep on planning and taking our trip until then and maybe dance a bit.

A Long and Potentially Boring Description of My Easters

Well, despite having celebrated it twice this year,* I believe Easter was a very happy occasion. The weekend's events include dressing rather morosely on Good Friday for our funeral of sorts, and, like at most funerals, giggling madly. I've never been to a funeral other than this one, and from past experience and books/movies/that one line from "One Week" by BareNakedLadies, people tend to laugh at funerals. Continuing with the actions occurring on said Friday, my friend Aimée, Ria, and I proceeded in lighting our candles an hour or so too early. This resulted in having very little candle to light our way as we walked around the church. Of course, the wind made several attempts on the lives of our flames (and, naturally, succeeded), which resulted in us following up on another Good Friday tradition: bother Jesse (Aimée's older brother) senseless by asking him to relight our candles. Unfortunately, this tradition could not be followed upon due to the fact that Jesse was, this year, up at the front with the priest and we were, of course, at the back. We did manage to, however, relight our candles once before Jesse suggested we take a second candle. This comment resulted in my throwing away my pitiful stub and exchanging it for a full-length candle before being scolded by Ria and putting it back. These comments resulted in my inability to further participate in any Good Friday traditions other than senseless giggling.

Saturday's events included standing outside (this time with full-length candles) with an unnamed accomplice [Aimée] and spending the whole time asking each other if each pause the priest made in his speech really was the end... or just another false alarm. We also made slightly amusing comments on various things and debated whether Jesse really was singing along or if his lips had simply gone numb from the cold. We then proceeded to walking around the church and fighting against the bitter wind to keep the little flame from our candles alive, and then we listened to what I shall forever consider as the world's weirdest knock-knock joke. Then, towards the end, we began to discuss the texting apps on our iTouches before reentering the church. Later, I might've ruined a shirt I rather liked by nearly setting it on fire, ruined a perfectly good skirt by dripping hot wax on it, was nearly set on fire by Aimée and due to my overactive [and slightly paranoid] imagination, I have convinced myself that I also nearly set the priest on fire. O______o Afterwards, when the sermon finished, I informed my unnamed accomplice [Aimée] that I "officially re-hate your brother. Again" before hugging her good-bye. Shortly after, we gorged ourselves on eggs, cozonac, and various forms of cookies. Once we tired of this we went to our hotel room where we slept soundly until around 10 am, when I woke up and went to the bathroom.

More on Sunday's events: after spending about 2 or 3 minutes the night before (because surprise, surprise, I fell asleep rather quickly last night) worrying that the Easter Rabbit would not fill my shoes because I had, in fact, placed them beneath my bed and not with the others, I awoke and discovered that they had been moved and now had a yellow marshmallow bunny-pop in them. After eating a rather unbalanced breakfast of eggs, left-over cookies and whatnot, I got dressed and rehearsed my little "piece" I was going to read later in church. Then we actually left for church where I made a rather starling and depressing discovery before the actual cool part came along. You see, every Easter Sunday, we read the same excerpt from the Bible in multiple languages. Sometimes there are more, sometimes there are less. This year we had Romanian, English, (read by the priest), French (read by his wife), Spanish (read by Aimée's and Jesse's older brother), Latin (read by I-don't-know-who), German (read by the deacon), Russian (read by Aimée's and Jesse's father), Ukrainian (read by another older brother of Aimée's), Chinese (read by my mother), Japanese (read by moi), and Hebrew (also read by the priest).

Following these activities we went downstairs for "coffee hour" and had lunch. My U.A. [Aimée] and I bumped each other some apps for our iTouches and tried to also bump each other music, but to no avail. On the other hand, these apps are really fun!! Thanks Aimée!! :D After Aimée left, though, I listened to a bit of music and helped Johnny and his friend Dimitri with their Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? game, and then we went home. The car trip was okay, after we finally stopped playing Britney Spears's new album, and then we got home where it was freezing.

After some time, Ria, Johnny, and I settled down to watch three episodes of Remington Steele <3 Then after dinner I sat down and wrote this lengthy description of my weekend. On my iTouch. Not computer. I find that verging on suicidal, but I've always had a screw loose. ;)

*The first time this year I celebrated Easter was, in fact, much shorter and because of this, might be considered less boring. During the sermon, I was wedged between Aimée and Jesse, which made it rather awkward for me, due to the fact that I could not stop yawning and was so, so sleepy... zzZzzZZZZzzz... somewhere around half-past one I succumbed to slumber and my head found a pillow in Jesse's right shoulder. About an hour later at two-thirty I awoke and began to express my embarrassment as quietly as a half-asleep person can while apologizing profusely. I soon realized, though, that while it was indeed 2.30 am, and that perhaps because I was so sleepy, the fact remained that Jesse would not now nor ever mind that I fell asleep on his shoulder. This may be due to the fact that it was mid-January and Jesse was asleep in his own bed while I, four hours worth of driving away, was lying in my own.