Sunday, November 25, 2012

Legendary

Hello again,

So now everybody know! What a relief! Clappie told his parents, I told mine already a while ago. We told our friends & family through this blog. The only ones we did not tell are our colleagues. Since we are leaving in 9,5 months, we still have to work for a while . We want to work till the end of August, and then have a couple of days to prepare before we leave. It is scary to think they might find out, so I decided to change our picture on the blog. In this way, we cannot be traced! Fake names & no pics, perfect! :-)
We both want to take time credit at work, which means we will take a leave of absence at work for 8 months. When we'll come back, we'll have our old jobs back. This will make it easier to get back on our feet. We will need the money to find a new apartment, since we decided to not sublet our current apartment. Instead, we are moving out of our apartment in the city the 1st of August. We are going to move in with my dad for 5 weeks before we leave. I feel a bit ridiculous to move in with my dad at the age of 29. Clap will even be 30 at that point (!) :-). Still, it is only temporarily, and it will allow us to save 1500€ extra!
When we come back in May 2014, we'll immediately start working again. We will still be with my dad, and this again will allow us to save up some money quickly so we can move back to Antwerp in the summer.
May 2014, it sounds so far away! I remember we used to talk about a world trip 3 years ago. We always had 2013/2014 in mind. And it seemed an eternity away. Now, it's only 9,5 more months... Time flies. And you'd better make the best of it. When I think about my life, I realise that I am a very impulsive person. I can decide to do something, and go for it a 100%. I realise that maybe I will make some mistakes along the way. But that's life. You cannot stop living just because you are afraid to make a mistake! You cannot predict the future, you can never know what is going to happen. Even if you stay in your safe world of habits and comfort, unhappiness can crawl up on you and mistakes can be made. It is the same for me with the trip we are taking. Some people give us comments such as: What about your job? Aren't you afraid to ruin your career? What about your apartment? Why don't you use all that money to buy a house? You are already 28, don't you want children? etc etc etc.
I don't live for my job. My job is there to keep me alive. A career is great, but life is more important. I would also love to own a house, but I would rather wait a couple of years to figure out where I want to live and settle down, before I become a slave of the bank for another 30 years. Children? Bwa, we'll see. I'm ONLY 28 :D ;)
My point: maybe I'll make some mistakes, but at least I will have seen the world. And it will be LEGEN - wait for it...............................................................................

DARY!!







Sunday, November 11, 2012

Hello everybody,

My first time every on this blog. Wow! This makes it all more real!
This blog will serve as a countdown to our round the world trip that we are planning to take in September 2013. So that is about 10 months for you to still enjoy our lovely company :-) We are slowely planning our trip and decided to stay away for 8 months, so we would return the middle of May. The countries we decided to visit are the following:

Peru
Bolivia
Argentina
Mexico
New Zealand
Australia
Thailand
Malaysia
Indonesia
China

We realise that this can still change, and some countries might be added. I would love to go to the Fiji Islands for example, but we need to see if this fits in our budget. Since we only decided to leave on this world trip a couple of months ago, we only started saving at that point. We had a small amount of savings, but not enough take a world trip ;) Furthermore, we have rent and bills to pay, so it's not very easy to save a lot of money. I stopped buying clothes, we stopped going out for dinner so much ;), we stopped buying furniture for the house, and we decided not to go on any other trip this year (originally we wanted to go to Rome to Xmas, thank you booking.com for the free cancellation option :D). This should give us a total of savings of about K25 to K30, hopefully. We do not want to work during our trip, but really enjoy all the places we are going to visit as much as possible. Bearing this in mind, it makes it easier to give up dinners and clothes! In the end, life stay the same when you spend less. It is just a mindset in the end... You can enjoy life just as much without all this expensive stuff!

For the rest, I'm taking a bit of a risk creating this blog, since my colleagues could find out.... I am not planning on quiting my job, but taking a leaf of absence. So I hope I can keep this blog hidden from them. If anyone would read it anyway, plz don't tell the partners! ;)
This is the reason why I am not using our real names in the blog, but our alter ego's: Marz (the nickname Clappie Always uses for me) and Clap or Clappie (what I always call him :) ). Or "pies", from cutie pie and sweetie pie, is a very common reference! Hope you all don't mind :).


Thanks for reading my first post on this blog. Other posts will follow soon....

A big kiss and hug to all,

Marz