In one short week we, Crystal Rose and Ryan, will be jumping on a plane and heading east not to return until we visit 14 countries on 4 continents in just under four months! Why would we drop everything and go, you ask? Why not! Well, the short answer is that we’ve decided to forego the traditional one-day-wedding extravaganza, take the money and run. CR first heard about the Round-The-World trip about 6 years ago from some Australians while she was working at a summer camp in Maine. She filed it away in her brain as something on the “Things To Do Before I Get Too Old” list. 4 years later she met Ryan and in him saw someone who would make an excellent R-T-W companion. We fell in love and got engaged and started thinking about where and how to get married. After changing our plans a million times and leaving everyone guessing, we decided that a huge wedding, lovely as they can be, was not our thing and so was born the idea of eloping. But we couldn’t figure out where to elope to. That was when we came up with our brilliant plan to not just go somewhere, but to go EVERYWHERE! It’s taken almost a year of planning, working and saving. It’s been a tough year for two people who love to act (mostly for free or teeny tiny stipends), socialize and eat in restraunts. We’ve instead spent most nights working til 10 or 11, then coming home, curling up on the couch watching crappy reality TV (much to Ryan’s chagrin) and playing Scrabble. Budgeting is so tough but it’s taught us a lot about ourselves. Crystal Rose put herself on a strict shopping diet (no new shoes for 9 months! -okay I cheated a couple of times), Ryan had to turn down several acting gigs and we stopped doing things like drinking in bars, eating out in restraunts and pulled a lot of double shifts waiting tables. And now, we’re about as ready as we’ll ever be!
Our plan is to use this blog as a place where our loved ones can keep up to date on where we are, what we’re seeing and how we’re doing. We’d love it if you left us little messages or even tips on what to see and do in a certain place! This will help us stave off our own homesickness and keep our mothers from going insane too!
Posted from USA:
posted Saturday May 2006