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    A few days late making my New Year’s resolution this year…Oops! Way to start out the year, huh? Well, determined to make the best of it, so here are my New Years resolutions for 2010:

1. Finish writing the book about our travels.
2. Get a book agent.
3. Is publishing too much to ask?

    There are other goals, but for right now they must remain a secret. Anyway, those three are huge and will take a lot of time and effort to complete. Wish me luck!

    Hello everyone! After such a long time with nothing, I feel the need to alert everyone as to why I have not caught up on posts. We had our computer stolen along with several other things in Ecuador. Turns out, Ecuador is the place where someone is most likely to get robbed of everywhere we have been. Congrats Ecuador! Anyway, I will try to finish Africa posts, get something up for Iceland, and write a bit about Machu Picchu and the Nazca lines as soon as possible. Who knows? Maybe something in Central America will really wow me soon so I can write to you about it! Hope so. Well, talk to you soon.

    Continental drift: Definition - The state of exctitement and heightened awareness in which a long-distance traveler consistently finds him/herself. It may produce elatement, sweaty palms, huge expenditure of cash, and bugged eyes.

    Yep, boys and girls! It’s almost time to shove off to a new continent for awhile! Europe has been fun, but Africa is calling us back. This time we will head to the southern tip of the African continent to just a handful of countries that we travelers like to call “South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia”. If you are a non-traveler, you probably call them “South Africa, Huh?, Excuse me?, Where’s that, and Is that near the Congo?”. We recently bought our plane tickets through Air France flying from London, England to Johannesburg, South Africa. Air France means we get to enjoy a bit of wine, cheese and a few croissants on our way, so that made us very happy in itself. The plan is to rent a car and drive to all 5 countries over the course of around a month. We fly to Africa on July 6th and return to England on August 4th. Our trip to Africa shoud include (hopefully) all of the following: Some type of volunteer service (let us know if you have any ideas), several different types of safaris (walking, 4×4, car, horseback), and visits to see cave art as well as dinosaur tracks. We have our mental lists prepared of the animals that we are most interested in seeing: zebra, rhinoceros, giraffe, elephant, leopard, lion, hippopotamus, cape buffalo. The Canon Rebel XTI is in full sports mode with the zoom lens ready! With any luck, those of you living vicariously at the moment should have an idea of what southern africa looks like in just over a month. Hope you’re as excited as we are!!!

    We also purchased our tickets to fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina after our return from Africa and our week-long trip to Iceland in August. Whew! This is going to  be one busy summer, or winter…Whatever…The idea is to travel in Argentina (including the glaciers of Patagonia), Uruguay, Chile, Peru (Macchu Picchu and Nazca Lines here we come!), and Ecuador (including a tour through the Galapagos Islands…oh, the turtles we will see!!!). South America should be a real treat…and I don’t just mean the massive steaks!!! Then we will be off to Central America and back home shortly after, but more on that later…

    Okay, so it took us about a month to get this together and actually take the time to post it. Here are some things that we have come to realize after being on the road for such an extended time:

1. Before we left home, we knew nothing of the world outside of Mississippi. Now we know just a very small amount.
2. Life in the USA is easy/much more privileged as compared to life anywhere else that we have been.
3. God is good. Seeing so much more of His creation has really improved our view on this fact.
4. Long-distance or extended travel is much more difficult than we expected it to be.
5. We have much less patience than we previously thought we had.
6. People in Fiji tend to have an extremely high tolerance for hallucinogenic drinks (kava). At least they are happy all the time!
7. Bus travel in many places (such as Turkey…the BEST!!!) is much more efficient and clean as compared to good old Greyhound USA.
8. Cold showers aren’t so bad…if you’re in Koh Phi Phi, Thailand. However, they are awful in the Himalayan mountains in Nepal in 30-40 F temperatures!
9. The proper technique for using squat toilets.
10. Speaking of toilets, it turns out that they are NOT a basic human right. (Silly American us!) Some cost upwards of $1 with no tissue or cleaning provided.
11. Clothing is much cheaper in SEAsia than in the United States. Little shopping trip anyone? Nepal for cold weather clothes and Thailand, Vietnam, or Malaysia for warm.
12. Snowy mountains beside sunny beaches are not just in fairy tales! They are in New Zealand!
13. Trying the local food usually does not equal health or happiness for me or Jennifer.
14. We will never be able to see it all. Sadly.
15. Time really does seem to fly when one is having a marvelous time!
16. Everyone (almost) seems to hate us Americans. Turns out they are just jealous though…(Ha ha!)
17. It is possible to remain in absolutely awful shape even when a person walks 10 miles per day on average over the course of 8 months.
18. There are far more sheep in New Zealand and more kangaroos in Australia than there are people in the respective countries.
19. We are enormously blessed to have been born in a country where true Christianity is still practiced and applauded. More specifically, being from the south (the Bible belt) is an enormous privilege.
20. Photographs cannot do this world justice. It must be experienced through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell in order to even understand half of what is going on around oneself.