We have taken the next step in preparing our trip. The tickets have all been booked now and on January 1st our new life will start! At 10.30 AM we will fly from Schiphol to Cape Town, Like & Jeroen: here we come! We fully understand that this is not a very convenient time for our friends and family here, so we forgive you if you cannot come to wave us goodbye ;-)
All our other flights have been booked as well so we already know that – if everything is goes well – we will arrive on June 27th 2011, 18:05 hrs at Dusseldorf Airport. That is a very weird feeling….
My successor at work has already started. I am learning her all ins and outs now and am confident that she will do very well. With my colleagues I already had my ‘goodbye lunch’, so I can start to mentally prepare for the official goodbye.
Furthermore, I experienced my first world trip shock. It seemed a good plan to try to pack my backpack with everything that should be in it. This appeared to be quite a challenge, actually I only had the clothes and shoes and the backpack (70 l) was already full. This was without toiletries, books, laptop, mosquito net etc. I spontaneously got depressed and put all the stuff on the attic. It is now waiting until I feel ready to make a further selection. Now I have read in the Gap Year Book of Lonely Planet that this is a perfectly normal procedure and that it will only be the right the third time, so two more to go!