Six days to go...

( Jenn )

It seems like only yesterday we had one month, three weeks to go. Gah.

I'm freaked but not as much as I might be. Although, that's still one of those things that varies from minute to minute :P

We have four visas - China, Vietnam, India and Egypt - and they're the ones we really need because of tours or the ones we would find harder to get on the road. It's also more than I thought we'd have - originally we'd planned only to get two from home and we thought (time-wise) we'd be really pushing to get that. So yay!

We have all the clothes and travel gear we need, a general packing plan, our rough itinerary.

We have a number of things booked already - two tours, our first accommodations in Singapore, our hotels in Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok and Cambodia, our flats in Spain (1 week in Nerja, Spain - our first real stop in Europe) and Tuscany (2 weeks in March), our car for Europe (a Peugeot Open Europe lease) and almost all our flights (most of which we can change the dates on if need be).

The rest of our accommodations we'll book as we go and I'm happy with that.

We also have a better clue as to how Anica will do with museums (as long as we don't swamp her) thanks to the four hours we spent at the War Museum in Ottawa. She took in /so/ much, found it fascinating and has talked to us about it /a lot/ since our visit.

We've already had some lovely experiences -- the people at the embassies and consulates have been wonderful, the couple at our place in Spain have offered to take delivery of some guidebooks (and anything else we'd like to have in Europe but can't carry now), the couple at our place in Tuscany have told us if our deposit via wire transfer deposit doesn't work (they're in a small town and our bank branch didn't seem 100% convinced it would go through), not to worry, we have the flat booked and we can pay when we get there. It probably helps that we're totally off-season and have been emailing back and forth with them for weeks but still... lovely.

We have a friend who's offered to do a scrapbook for us *hugs her tight* and who we will be sending all the little odds and ends which I had planned on not collecting this trip because of the daunting task of putting them together when home.

We have the wonderful gentleman who made our selling our car such a nice and smooth experience and made Anica feel less sad about "the Altima" being gone.

And of course we have our parents who have "been there" in so many ways - taking care of Anica while we shopped/ran errands, helping us get around once the car was gone, looking after things for us when we're travelling, etc. I can't even begin to list everything they've done. But above all, they've offered nothing but support and advice and been thrilled for us all the way.