2 1/2 MORE MONTHS!

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Hey, just trying this thing out for the first time...like the title says, there is only 2 1/2 months before Ann and I jump on a plane for 21 hours (that doesn't even include the flying time from Ottawa to New Jersey). Now that summer vacation is over and the countdown is on it's seeming more real for sure. Before, it didn't really sink in that we were actually going to do this but it's coming REALLY fast! We're busy now trying to sell off our stuff so it's less junk to store while we're away. We're also busy getting all our documents organized like addresses for Canadian Embassies in the countries we're going to...Malaysian Airlines (that's who we're flying with most of the way) offices for when we want to change our flight dates...and we've set up a yahoo e-mail account...runaway_canadians...thanks to Lyne in Moncton for the suggestion. We're trying to collect e-mail addresses so we can keep in touch with everybody while we're away. I'm hoping that we'll be able to e-mail or update this travelblog at least once a week.

We got some REALLY great news the other day. A friend of ours, a girl I know from curling, Brenda, has some friends in Malaysia because she worked there for a year...she e-mailed her friends, Chris (from Canada) and Vivian (from Malaysia), and they said that any friends of hers are friends of theirs so they offered us a place to stay and even offered to pick us up from the airport in Kaula Lumpur. We'll probably just take the LRT (light rail transit) to their place. This is perfect because we were really worried about having a rough first night there. The place lands in KL at 10pm...prob closer to 11pm by the time we'd be able to get out of there and then we'd still have to find a place to stay and I'm sure we'll be exhausted! So, I'm looking forward to meeting Chris and Vivian. Also hoping that they can help us out with learning the local language...bhasa malay...not sure if that's what it's called...I think I read it in a book a few months ago so I could be completely wrong!

I read on the thorntree at lonely planet that there's 7 stages that you go through when you're going on a trip like this...
The 7 emotional steps to a RTW trip:
1) Wow, how about going on a long journey?
2) Hey, I could really, seriously do this!
3) OK, decided to do it and am making plans now.
4) Just a few months to go and am feeling a bit apprehensive - what if X, Y or Z?
5) Nearly time to go and ... AHHHHHHH!
6) Jump!
7) Wow, what a fantastic time I'm having, why was I so nervous to begin with?

So far, we've hit those steps in exactly the same sequence!  Anyways, I'm not a big 'writer' type so I'm not sure how well I'll do with keeping this up-to-date. Cheers,

-bryan & ann

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