This is the year...

I can't believe how quickly this year has gone- it's May already and that means I'm about to depart Australia and go traveling around the world for 7 and a bit months. I'll be leaving my home, family, friends (and dog!!) for much longer than I ever have before, and my return flight home at Christmas seems like both a long way off, and way too short a time to fit in everything I want to see and do.

Since I finished Uni last November I've been working for, reading about, and planning this trip almost full-time which makes it surreal to imagine that in just 5 days I will have set out and begun it. And somehow I've left it until now to buy important things like shoes and clothes!

The word is wanderlust.

Pictured is a stack of books that are currently living on my desk and floor beside my bed, which have inspired this trip and kept me saving money over the last 3 years.

These range right back to my childhood with Swallows & Amazons- which made me want to have adventures in the Lakes District in England, through to studied texts like The Quiet American, Diary of Anne Frank, and Auschwitz & Apres. These all affected me to the extent that I feel a need, almost a duty, to see the places on this earth that they occurred. And then there are the exciting and inspiring Lonely Planets with the big glossy pictures and the little travel novels with the funny anecdotes which people have given me for birthdays and Christmasses.

As for movies... the ones which really made me think 'I want to go there' include: Amelie (Paris), Vicki Cristina Barcelona (Spain), The Beach (Thailand), The Motorcycle Diaries (South America) and The Sound of Music (Austria.)

Anyway, this first blog is just for me to get the hang of it, and to try and get my head around the fact that I'm leaving soon!

Next update will be from somewhere more exciting than my bedroom on a drizzly May day in Melbourne.

Jess :)