I put a quote on my home page when I set this blog up which states:

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

and this is what I’m most excited about when it comes to the travel we are planning.  Finally getting to take the amazing images I have been poring over for the past ten years out of the books; to shift the stories that others have told me out of my imagination; and to re-evaluate the smells and tastes of westernised cuisine, and actually experience these places for myself.  Even after doing so much research on different places, cultures, transport, accommodation, etc… I still feel like I know nothing about how relocating my life and places tiny roots randomly all over the world will actually go in practice.

Recently, many thoughts have been going through my head about why I so badly want to travel.  Is it just that I want to go and lay on the beach for days on end, have no responsibilities, and eat and drink all I can?  Well, yes, a little.

But one of my favourite things about going travelling is meeting so many different people.  Not just travellers who, like us, will be newbies in these foreign places, but also the locals – the people that make up the different country’s culture.

There are so many people I am yet to meet, friends I am yet to make, ridiculous broken-English conversations I am yet to have, amazing experiences I am yet to be offered, and the only way I can approach this is with as little assumption and expectations as possible.

And, the excitement just keeps building!