Announcement!

I spent most of this week skiing. Today was my 24th time on the slopes this season. On Wednesday, I skiied as far away from Kirchberg as I have been so far (not including taking the train to Zell am See/Kaprun). I kept taking lifts and gondolas as far as I could for almost 3 hours. I visited 6 or 7 towns and took the gondola up from each one. I finally decided to head back, without even going as far as I could have. Skiing back required the help of a map several times. When I got back, I realized I had not taken the same run, the same lift, or the same gondola twice the entire day! It was a lot of fun skiing on so much new terrain.

Alright now on to my announcement. I will get right to it. I am leaving in April, after the ski season is over, to continue my backpacking adventure. For 3 months, I will travel through Europe, Africa, Asia, and end up in North America! And here is the best part: I won't be travelling alone!!! Maren and I have decided to do this trip together, and I am incredibly excited. This is the third part of my adventure so far, with the first being travel through Europe, the second being working in Austria. This third part is definitely the craziest and coolest part!! As I have mentioned in other blogs, neither Maren nor I are big on planning trips. We would both prefer to just take off without much of a plan and figure it all out along the way. It keeps us flexible and able to change directions every time we hear about a cool place. But for this type of trip, we both think we will need to do a bit of planning, given the expense of flights across continents. If we were staying in Europe, it would be no big deal as there are cheap flights everywhere. But we need to book some flights very soon for the places we plan on travelling to. We will probably only book the longest and most expensive flights, and not plan anything else until the trip begins. So here is our tentative itinerary:

We will fly from Germany to Istanbul, Turkey. From there, we will take a bus out to the western coast of Turkey for a bit, and then a ferry out to the Greek islands. After the Greek islands, we will end up in Athens, from where we will fly to Tel Aviv, Israel. We plan on about 2 weeks in Israel, then will probably take a bus to Cairo. After some time in Egypt (and hopefully a Nile River cruise!), we will fly to Mumbai, India! We will have about 3 weeks in India, then will somehow get to China for another 3 weeks! After that, we are hoping to go to southeast Asia, probably Thailand, Malaysia, or the Phillippines (we will only have time for one, I think). By the middle of July, we will fly from southeast Asia to Seattle, just in time for my sister Lauren's wedding! Maren and I are still working on our plans for the U.S. and beyond after the wedding, so I won't mention any of that just yet.

So, there ya go. Turkey, Greece, Israel, Egypt, India, China, Thailand (?). I plan on finishing work here in Kirchberg by April 1st, then heading to Frankfurt to meet up with Maren when she flies back from South Africa. We will meet up with most of her family and get things ready for the trip. We intend to leave the second week of April. I guess I should say it again: I am incredibly excited for this trip! I couldn't imagine a better plan or a better travel partner!