Preparation Tidbits, part 1

I have spent the last few months preparing for my upcoming year-long trip in numerous ways, all of which will hopefully be discussed on this blog in the next month or so. Even though I'm still not quite finished with my southern road trip (two entries left!), I felt the following factoid marked a good place to start blogging in the present, rather than the past:

This past weekend I went with my father to MicroCenter, and we purchased an HP Mini Netbook, an adorable 60 GB mini-computer. It is my graduation present and I will be taking it with me on my trip. I'm expecting it to be a combination picture repository, entertainment center, travel agent, long distance phone, and word processor. I will be saving pictures, listening to music, scheduling flights, finding couch surfing or SERVAS hosts, and writing in a journal/writing essays and articles/here on this very blog.

Here is where I show the world exactly how nerdy I am: I have named my new netbook Passepartout, which is pronounced Pahs-partoo. Passepartout is the name of Phileas Fogg's manservant in "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne. I am feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Coming soon..... (!)

Hey, want to see something really cool?


(You can click on the image to see it bigger. Excuse my shoddy amateur photoshoppery)

Get excited.

Getting Ready to Get Ready

My first ever real post in this brand spanking new blog. But it feels good, because it means that I'm actually acknowledging the fact that I'm leaving. Soon. I spent so many of the past weeks pretending to myself that working for a boring pharmaceutical company was all there was, but in the past week or so I've woken up and started preparing, mentally and physically. I got my visa in the mail, got three Ireland guides out of the library (I was standing in front of the shelf agonizing over which one to get and then remembered, "Oh! It's a library! They're free!" I won't bring all of them, probably just two.) We bought me an uber-suitcase-- seriously, this is every suitcase you could ever want combined into one-- at Macy's for 50% off. And I leave for Ireland in 54 hours. Once I'm on the plane-- then I'm REALLY going to have to come to grips with all of this.

Also, I've been looking through my pictures from the last time I went to China in the past few days. I rediscovered this picture, which I took in Lijiang. The women are Naxi. I will be doing a Naxi homestay sometime in April.