After numerous requests and demands, I have started a blog to document my experiences over the next year. I've never blogged before, or even written a travel diary (actually, I lie, I wrote a travel diary in 1998 when my parents took my siblings and I on a round-the-world trip, causing us to miss several weeks of school. My school insisted on my keeping of a travel diary to compensate for my missed weeks of GRADE SIX because private girl schools are intense like that - how else are you going to produce Ja'miezing students?). As such, I'm unsure how this blog will turn out, but I'm hoping that it will be vaguely interesting and readable.
It's now around 24 hours until I will have to head to the airport tomorrow morning. Over the past few weeks, whenever I've thought of the adventures I'm about to undertake, I have felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Strangely, I was more excited in the early stages of planning when this all seemed quite abstract to me. Now that it's time to actually embark on my trip trepidation is becoming more prominent in my mind. I think that this is partly because I have had my barrier exams this week (which is bound to give anybody at least some anxiety problems) and partly because now that I'm actually saying my goodbyes to friends and family everything is seeming more real and less of a distant fantastical plan (it probably also doesn't help that almost every single person who's given me a goodbye hug over the past year has followed it up by holding me out at arms' length, sternly looking me in the eyes, and then saying something along the lines of "you be safe now" or "don't do anything I wouldn't do" or "I don't want to see you returning home in a coffin").
(non sequitur)
Here's a vague outline of my itinerary up until September:
- December: Hoc Mai placement in Hanoi, Vietnam
- Early January: Myanmar backpacking (or, if I'm extremely unlucky, fly back to Australia to sit supplementary exams)
- Mid-late January: student placement in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
- February to end of April: West Africa via Ethiopia, including 2 month student placement in Ghana
- May: Europe (UK, Denmark, Greece, Istanbul, Norway, Portugal)
- June to August: South America (travelling with my mum, then backpacking to give me some time to gain proficiency in Spanish, followed by a student placement in Mendoza, Argentina)
- Late August to early September: US, including Burning Man
After that, my plans are still being formulated. It takes a lot of time and effort to organise some things (ie, student placements) and, despite devoting much of renal block to this, I found it difficult to organise 12 months of stuff whist also passing med school. I'm waiting on my sister to apply for leave and then I'm trying to persuade her to meet me in Cape Town so that we can do an overland trip up to Victoria Falls. Then I'm planning to organise another extramural student placement (in Scandinavia), which would give myself time to adjust back to having #1stworldproblems before returning back to Australia.
Feel free to comment. Thanks for reading xx
It's now around 24 hours until I will have to head to the airport tomorrow morning. Over the past few weeks, whenever I've thought of the adventures I'm about to undertake, I have felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Strangely, I was more excited in the early stages of planning when this all seemed quite abstract to me. Now that it's time to actually embark on my trip trepidation is becoming more prominent in my mind. I think that this is partly because I have had my barrier exams this week (which is bound to give anybody at least some anxiety problems) and partly because now that I'm actually saying my goodbyes to friends and family everything is seeming more real and less of a distant fantastical plan (it probably also doesn't help that almost every single person who's given me a goodbye hug over the past year has followed it up by holding me out at arms' length, sternly looking me in the eyes, and then saying something along the lines of "you be safe now" or "don't do anything I wouldn't do" or "I don't want to see you returning home in a coffin").
(non sequitur)
Here's a vague outline of my itinerary up until September:
- December: Hoc Mai placement in Hanoi, Vietnam
- Early January: Myanmar backpacking (or, if I'm extremely unlucky, fly back to Australia to sit supplementary exams)
- Mid-late January: student placement in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
- February to end of April: West Africa via Ethiopia, including 2 month student placement in Ghana
- May: Europe (UK, Denmark, Greece, Istanbul, Norway, Portugal)
- June to August: South America (travelling with my mum, then backpacking to give me some time to gain proficiency in Spanish, followed by a student placement in Mendoza, Argentina)
- Late August to early September: US, including Burning Man
After that, my plans are still being formulated. It takes a lot of time and effort to organise some things (ie, student placements) and, despite devoting much of renal block to this, I found it difficult to organise 12 months of stuff whist also passing med school. I'm waiting on my sister to apply for leave and then I'm trying to persuade her to meet me in Cape Town so that we can do an overland trip up to Victoria Falls. Then I'm planning to organise another extramural student placement (in Scandinavia), which would give myself time to adjust back to having #1stworldproblems before returning back to Australia.
Feel free to comment. Thanks for reading xx
