I just finished my last exam of my student career (at least for the forseeable future) and I am feeling a little weird about that. Rather than being incredibly excited I am eerily calm about the whole thing. After three years, thousands of dollars, and hours and hours of work I thought that this would have been a more remarkable feeling. Maybe it hasn’t hit home yet because I still have a final edit of my 40 page research paper to do…
Regardless of how I feel about being done law school, I’m feeling incredibly excited about Wednesday when we leave to first, drive across the country and then on May 10th on our adventure. What is taking up our time now is selling almost everything, coming next is packing, and finally the dreaded cleaning!
We are selling almost everything. We are keeping only our backpacks, a car full, and our wonderful table (that we refinished) & skis, the latter two a friendly (hopefully!) craigslister has agreed to drive across the country for $150. We’ve sold the rest of our big stuff in three ways: on craigslist, to new neighbours in our building, and to our friends at our epic “Drink Our Booze” party! In order to get rid of the “doodads” we have been having an apartment sale for the past week. It is a strange feeling when strangers come over, rummage through bins of your goods, and then walk out the door with your (sometimes) lovely stuff, leaving you feeling a little bit lighter and a dollar or two richer.  My friend Chelsea, who is living in Vancouver on a six-month project, also took a bunch of the smaller stuff to help her long-term executive suite feel a little more like home!
The only furniture we have left is the table, a desk (only for a few more hours until it is picked up), a teak (veneer) dresser (priced to sell), and the bed. We are very lucky to have a friend buying the bed the day before we leave so we won’t have to spend too much time without it! We still have a ton of doodads, most of which (if they don’t sell today or tomorrow) will end up donated to charity.
Divesting ourselves of everything is a really wonderful experience, it feels amazing not to be encumbered by clunky material goods!
You are my hero! Live the dream…See y’all next week.
I learnt about your blog from Laura Harrison, who I met in a First Aid training course on Wed. Nov. 17, 2010.
My husband and I did something very similar. We traveled for 8 months going where the wind took us and the cheapest flights. Working our way eastward from London, England, we had the intentions of finding a new home in Thailand and teaching English, but Canada called us back with job opportunities too good to turn down.
I got tears in my eyes reading your post because it was such a familiar experience and feeling to me. I want to do it all over again, yet the logical part of me wants to do it, “Same but different”. Ha,ha. We also created a blog (www.outtheresomewhere.ca) with our story, and I am trying to update it whenever possible about the adventure that has continued here in Canada. We left Canada in January 2010 and came back in September 2010.
I look forward to reading more of your adventures and looking through your photos.
Cheers. Thanks for documenting you travels. -Laura-