We´re not in Palo Alto anymore, Toto

After a somewhat hectic last day in CA we made it to Costa Rica this afternoon. Fortunately my cousin Carlyn met us at the airport allowing us to dodge the kajillion taxi folks at the exit. Hopefully we´ll make it up to Poas tomorrow!

Chopped it off!

A couple of years ago our friend Judith donated her hair to Locks of Love. Shortly after that Damon’s cousin Katie donated some of her hair. Then our friend Renee lopped off her locks and donated them- and most recently, Kristen’s sister, Katie, did. I’ve been trying to grow my hair out for about a year with the goal of cutting it off before we left on our adventure.

 

Besides getting my hair cut, I’ve been running a lot of errands getting the last minute stuff together for our trip. Damon’s been busy with post-doctoral position applications but we did get to have dinner with our friends Henry (who lives in SF) and Eryn (who was in town for work from DC) the other night which was fun. Unfortunately I left my camera in the car- but hopefully Henry will send me a photo to post. We’ve also been spending a bunch of time with my parents, Maia (my sister), and Gavin (my nephew-my brother-in-law is away for work). My cousin Melanie and her husband Bill came over for lunch the other day since their office is near Maia, Greg, and Gavin’s new house – how convenient!

A few more errands to run tomorrow- and then we’ll hopefully get to see my college roommate Lauren who’ll be in town for a wedding and my friend Christina from high school who lives in SF!

Going, Going… Gone!

We made it out of Seattle last Saturday around 5:45 pm. Thank you to everyone who helped get us on our way- whether it was helping pack, giving us boxes, moving stuff into storage, providing moral support, making sure we had food to eat, or dealing with the loose ends at work. We couldn’t have done it without you. Somehow it all ended up fitting in the car.

The first day of our adventure was spent driving down to Eugene, OR where we spent an uneventful night at a Motel 6. Sunday morning we woke up, and in honor of our friend Joanne passing her viva (PhD defense in Britain), we celebrated by eating at her husband’s favorite restaurant. Congratulations, Jo!

From there we drove down to Woodland, CA where we visited Damon’s college roommate, Eli, his wife Kerri, and their 3 1/2 week old baby, Caleigh.

 

We got to spend some quality time with Zephyr

and Caleigh

before we checked out theU.C. Davis Arboretum. Then we drove down to Palo Alto to have dinner with my family.

Moving…

Well, mostly moving. Generally packing. We’re not out of our place until this weekend but the movers came yesterday. That was both good and bad. Good because they got all of our furniture, most of our books, pots, and pans plus other things like fine china that we don’t use everyday and got them into the storage unit. Bad because we only had 2 days to pack everything up but fortunately our awesome friends Renee and Madeline came over to help us. After the movers left yesterday Damon succumbed to the urge to nap- fortunately our friend Jody came over and helped us pack 7 more boxes of kitchen stuff. We still have a lot to pack. If you’re in Seattle and looking for storage space, I recommend People’s Storage in Ballard and if you’re moving within the Seattle area, Express Movers were really great.

Considering that we decided to get movers on Friday, things went pretty well overall. I’d rather be in Paris like our friend Alice though.

Credit Where Credit Is Due…

For those of you who hadn’t heard, during the debate over whether or not to keep my last name we started brainstorming combined last names that we could both take. Damon’s mom suggested a few including Albatoth and Tothano (currently our favorite), our friends Joy and Jason suggested Dothelambada, and there were a few other compound last names but we seem to have forgotten them in the haze of packing. The movers arrive Monday. Which is pretty remarkable given that we called them this afternoon.

Union not Intersection

What if we looked at a map of where either of us has been (instead of both together)…

It turns out we’re still missing South America, most of Africa, most of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Hmmm… perhaps we need to work on that. But first, back to packing.

Where in the world…?

We haven’t figured out all of our itinerary yet, but here’s what we know so far:

Between now and Oct. 28, pack up apartment, drive to California to see family and friends and leave our car in Palo Alto.

Oct. 29-Nov. 14: Costa Rica to visit my cousin Carlyn and travel with our friend Jenkay

Nov. 14-Nov. 20: California to hang out with friends and family.

Nov. 20- Dec. 1: Travel with friends to Coron, Palawan and Sagada, Mountain Province in the Philippines as part of a reunion trip for the language program Maia and I did in the Philippines, Tagalog On Site.

Dec. 1-Dec. 30: Hang out in the Philippines with family and friends. Hopefully travel with our friend Wendy to Bicol to visit our grad school advisor Chris.

Dec. 30-Jan. 2: New Year’s in Boracay with our friends Squirt and Kim.

January and part of February: A bit up in the air. Potentially Laos, Chiang Mai (Thailand) to see Damon’s cousin Katie and her family, and Australia to see our friends Kent (Sydney) and Alden (Melbourne).

Feb. 15-Feb. 19: Hang out with my dad in Manila

Feb. 19: Return to California. And then? East Coast? Skiing? Venezuela? UK? Kind of unclear.
April 23: Return to work.

In case you’re wondering where we’ve gone together in the past, here’s a map:

create your own visited country map

T minus 2

It’s been 6 months (tommorow) since we tied the knot and we’re getting ready to leave on our honeymoon. We are planning on packing up and leaving our lives in Seattle two weeks from today… family and friends have been asking if we’ll send photos and travelogues while we are on our 6 month adventure/honeymoon/post-PhD trip. So, we decided to set-up a blog. Instead of trying to figure this all out from an internet cafe in Costa Rica I thought I would procrastinate be organized and try and figure out this blogging thing ahead of time. I’m not crazy about the photo on the header but it will have to do for now since I really should finish making the living room liveable before the night is out. Seems like I’ve figured out the upload photo thing but am having a bit of a problem with the whole thumbnail vs. whole picture thing… Somehow the options shown in the FAQ section don’t all show up when I upload. Perhaps an issue to explore another day.